WILMINGTON, DE - Axalta Coating Systems (formerly DuPont Performance Coatings) will invest over $50 million to construct a new facility to manufacture and supply up to 25,000 metric tons of paint to automobile manufacturers that are expanding into south and central China. The plant will be dedicated to production of the company’s waterborne coatings that meet both manufacturer and regulatory environmental standards. Pending final government approvals, construction of the new facility is expected to break ground in the second half of 2013 with production beginning the first quarter of 2015.

The new facility will be close to customers in the Shanghai area and have easy access to major transportation routes reaching into western and southern areas of the country. This additional facility will complement the manufacturing capacity of Axalta’s flagship OEM coatings manufacturing plant in Changchun that is already accelerating production to meet extraordinary growth in automotive production in China.

“The waterborne coatings that will be produced at the new facility will be used in two of the consolidated manufacturing processes that Axalta has developed for automobile manufacturers to improve productivity and save energy,” said K. Peter Hurd, Axalta’s Vice President of Operations. The specially formulated primer of Axalta’s 3-Wet water-based system replaces the need for a full oven-bake step required after the application of traditional primers, enabling manufacturers to replace larger ovens, which are expensive to build and costly to operate. Products manufactured at the new facility will also be used with Axalta’s EcoConcept production system, a proprietary technology that combines the primer and basecoat, enabling manufacturers to replace multiple bake steps with only one.