This has been a challenging year for the coatings industry due to the global economic crisis. The industry has been impacted by the worldwide decline in manufacturing, the housing crisis in the United States and the challenges facing the automotive industry. These factors resulted in virtually across-the-board declines in sales. Of the Top 10 global leaders, every company posted lower sales for 2009 compared to 2008. Additionally, the majority of the PCI 25 posted lower or flat sales for 2009. While the numbers are down for 2009, there is optimism for 2010, and the industry seems to be moving forward in a positive direction, with many companies posting more positive numbers for the first quarter of 2010.
This year, some of the North American companies did not want to supply sales figures for 2009, which made ranking them impossible. Rather than omit them, it was decided to list the top 25 North American companies alphabetically instead of ranking companies according to sales numbers. For the most part, the list remains the same as our listing in 2009. The exception is BASF’s U.S. division, which requested to be removed from the PCI 25 and only be included as a global entity in our Top 10 global ranking.
While the PCI staff made every effort to seek out the top companies in the industry, we may have inadvertently omitted some. Please contact Karen Parker at parkerpcimag@gmail.com if you have interest in being included next year.