Continuous improvement Russkie Kraski

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Russkie Kraski (Russian Coatings) is one of Russia’s largest manufacturers of paints and coatings. Valery Abramov is the director general of Russkie Kraski. Here he tells Industry Europe about his company’s latest products and its successful collaboration with DuPont.

Russkie Kraski is based in the historic Russian city of Yaroslavl, to the northeast of Moscow. The company was established in 1838, when the merchant A.F. Vakhramejev set up a factory in Yaroslavl on the right bank of the River Kotorosl. Today Russkie Kraski is one of the major manufacturers of paint for industrial purposes, and supplies paints to Russian car and truck manufacturers. It offers one brand of paint, Strela, especially for railway carriages, while another of its well-known brands, Linia, is widely used in Russia to mark roads and the runways of airports.

One unit of the company, Yaroslavskie Kraski, makes paint for houses and for interior decorating. Another division, the Yaroslavl Powder Coatings Plant, manufactures paint for fridges and other domestic appliances. Overall, Russkie Kraski offers the entire spectrum of paint materials covering everything from oil pipelines to auto refinishing. In 2010, the company’s output was 32,300 tonnes and it achieved a turnover of $140.4 million.

Innovation

In 2010, Yaroslavl marked its thousand-year anniversary. Russkie Kraski’s paints were widely used in the preparations for the city’s millennium celebrations, which involved extensive construction and restoration projects. “For the thousandth anniversary of Yaroslavl, we developed our Brite paints for architectural use together with a German partner,” stated Mr Abramov. “This coating has highly protective properties and it will serve its purpose over 10 years without any alteration in its characteristics. Brite paint materials were used to paint the buildings at the river port and the planetarium and the mosque, as well as many residential buildings in the historic part of town.”

Russkie Kraski also makes a range of anticorrosion paints that are designed to protect metallic construction materials. The ProDecor anticorrosion paints are used in Russia’s oil and gas industry for protecting pipes and natural gas storage tanks. In addition, ProDecor paints protect bridges from corrosion, which is why they too were employed in Yaroslavl’s millennium preparations. “In Yaroslavl, a new bridge over the Kotorosl is coated with our paint,” said Mr Abramov. ProDecor can protect metallic structures from rust for

up to 15 years. Mr Abramov explained that as a Russian anticorrosion paint that meets stringent international requirements for quality, ProDecor represents an important advance. “Until recently materials of this kind were supplied only by foreign companies, but today we can make them by ourselves.”

Furthermore, in 2009 Russkie Kraski established the Guntex trademark and started production of a new line of car refinish materials under this brand. This has already achieved success on the Russian market and is a major achievement for the company in its collaboration with European partners.

Cooperation with DuPont

Russkie Kraski’s experience of producing paints for Russia’s automobile industry goes back over 70 years. To this day, paints and coatings for cars remain one of the company’s strategic business lines. Here, Russkie Kraski works closely with DuPont, producing its coatings for Russian customers such as Avtovaz. According to Mr Abramov, the joint venture with DuPont has given Russkie Kraski a real ace to play now that Russia’s automotive sector is starting to recover from the downturn.

“Today we are seeing a growth in sales of OEM materials. The joint venture between Russkie Kraski and DuPont is by no means the least important factor here. Currently we make paint not only for Avtovaz cars, but also for the cars of foreign companies that are based in the Russian Federation. The way the market is structured is that localised products have a share of about 50 per cent of OEM paints sales.”

The relationship with DuPont is also proving fruitful in the field of paint for interior decorating. The Yaroslavskie Kraski company has signed a licensing agreement with DuPont under which Yaroslavskie Kraski has obtained the right to produce and market paints within Russia using the Teflon trademark. “This agreement has allowed us to use the Teflon surface protector technology to create our Brite Hausweiss paint. This paint is designed to be used inside the home and has a high stain resistance, which makes it easier to keep living space clean.”

Conservation

Paint helps people to make improvements to the built environment, but Russkie Kraski strives to protect the natural environment as well. “The production facilities of Russkie Kraski are located near the historic centre of Yaroslavl, so the issues of social and environmental responsibility are very important to us,” stated Mr Abramov. Russkie Kraski maintains an environmental management system that is certified to ISO 14001. In 2010, the company was able to reduce its gas emissions by seven per cent per ton of output and to lower its electricity consumption. The company believes in the philosophy of continuous improvement.

“We are learning all the time,” says Mr Abramov, “and orienting ourselves towards what is required at the European and international level.” In the Soviet era, the factory was already Russia’s main producer of automotive paints and coatings. In the new era of greater openness to the outside world, Russkie Kraski has successfully built on that inheritance, through innovation and through the formation of constructive ties with European and American firms. In the future, Russkie Kraski aims to manufacture DuPont products for the Russian market in larger quantities, and therefore plans to expand its production capacity. n