AkzoNobel focuses on SE Asia as key growth market

Jeremy Rowe, managing director of AkzoNobel Decorative Paints for South East Asia & Pacifi c, talks about the ColourFutures 2013 program at the Sheraton Saigon Hotel in downtown HCMCon Wednesday - Photo: Dinh Dung

Jeremy Rowe, managing director of AkzoNobel Decorative Paints for South East Asia & Pacific, said at a briefing in HCMC on Wednesday that South East Asia remained a high-growth market for the Netherlands paints and coatings company.

Rowe said in decorative paints area, the company’s business was impacted by weaker demand in Europe while performance in South East Asia and the Pacific was more positive, despite increasing competition.

Rowe declined to reveal specific business figures about Vietnam market, but disclosed that AkzoNobel’s global revenue for 2012 was 15.4 billion euros, improving 5% over 2011. The operating profit for the year was 4% higher at 1.9 billion euros.

He said within decorative paints, despite all the challenging market conditions in Vietnam where a prolonged economic and construction downturn continued, AkzoNobel Paints Vietnam achieved strong profitability in 2012.

“At AkzoNobel, we see high-growth markets, like Vietnam, as a key focus of our present and future growth,” Rowe said, adding these markets are becoming more important and will be around 50% of the company’s revenue in this decade.

The managing director described Vietnam as a young and vibrant population of nearly 90 million people with the economy growing rapidly and the standard of living increasing considerably.

“With such a big population and increasing urbanization, Vietnam is definitely an important market that we are committed to grow in,” Rowe said.

There has been ongoing plant expansion in Vietnam which will add momentum to the continued growth of the company’s decorative paints business. Around 13 million euros has been invested in the production facility in Binh Duong Province in order to optimize operations and help meet growing customer demand in the region.

He said with the existing challenges in the local real estate and construction market, there continued to be opportunities in the affordable housing segment. AkzoNobel Paints Vietnam will likewise expand its product portfolio in the segment, such as Dulux Inspire and Maxilite Economy interior paint.