Even in highly developed and mature markets, such as Europe, solventborne wood coatings still account for 78% of all industrial wood coatings; the remaining part is equally shared by waterborne and UV-curing systems. The solventborne portion is fragmented into a number of different lacquer systems as outlined in Figure 1. As much as 6% of UV-curing systems are included in UP- and PU- lacquers.1
It is obvious from the graph that huge coating application sites, for instance automotive OEM plants, were the first to implement VOC-reduction measures. Consequently, their proportion is relatively small. For the small- to medium-size industry and the DIY sector, where the application is widespread, an improvement is only achievable if the coating technology - namely the resin system as a prime source of emissions - is changed to environmentally friendly systems. This presents a challenge to resin suppliers to serve the markets with tailor-made value propositions to meet different market demands.