Water-based Coatings Application Report - Container Section

At present, the top 20 domestic container manufacturing enterprises are almost all affiliated to the five major groups: CIMC, Shengli, Xinhua Chang, China Shipping, and Maersk. Among them, CIMC holds 50% of the domestic market, and the first three companies together account for 85% of the domestic market.

According to the standard of 4%-5% of the newly manufactured container volume, the VOCs emissions from coating in 2016 and before were as high as several million tons per year. In early 2016, with the policy pressure from the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the "Industry Self-discipline Convention for VOCs Control in China's Container Industry" emerged. It required that starting from April 1, 2017, the container industry in China should uniformly switch from paint to water-based coatings. For each container produced without rectification, a fine of 800 RMB would be imposed. 2016 was a challenging year, so the export volume of containers decreased compared to 2015. With the implementation of the oil-to-water conversion by a large number of container manufacturing enterprises, the VOCs emissions from coating should be much lower than the 94,000 tons calculated according to the standard.

China's advantages and necessity in VOCs control for containers

China contributes 95% of the global container manufacturing volume. Therefore, the VOCs control is of great significance for global environmental protection. China's VOCs control for containers has natural advantages, mainly reflected in the following two aspects:

1. Agglomeration. It is mainly concentrated in Guangdong and Jiangsu. The total VOCs emissions of CRI and Xinhua Chang in the above two provinces have exceeded 60% of the national total emissions.

2. High degree of automation in coating lines. The bottom processing techniques such as unwinding, leveling, cutting, and shot blasting are all automated; the base coat spraying in the workshop is mechanical automatic roller coating; the container coating adopts whole-box automatic coating, electrostatic coating, etc. techniques.

As a major producer and consumer of passenger vehicles, let's take a look at the VOCs emissions in the passenger vehicle manufacturing industry. Comparing the two can better illustrate the necessity of VOCs control for container manufacturing. The data I have is from 2014, which has certain reference significance.

In 2014, China's passenger vehicle production was 23 million units, and the number of containers was 3.02 million standard containers. The usage of paint and VOCs emissions were almost 1.8 times those of the passenger vehicle manufacturing industry. Therefore, the necessity of VOCs control for container manufacturing is evident. In addition, both the passenger vehicle and container manufacturing industries have successful cases of VOCs reduction. For example, Guangzhou Honda (China) switched to water-based paint, Guangzhou Huadu Nissan switched to water-based paint, Beijing Foton switched to water-based paint, and Dalian CRI and Dongguan Maersk have achieved 100% water-based paint production throughout the year.

Application of water-based coatings

The following are the trial lines of major container manufacturing enterprises for water-based coatings:

As of July 2016, the coated lines that have been renovated by each container manufacturing enterprise are as follows:

CRI Group

Shenzhen CRI Container Factory (South China)

Taicang CRI Container Factory (East China)

Dalian CRI Container Factory (North China)

Taiping Group

Huizhou Taiping Container Factory (South China)

Qidong Taiping Container Factory (East China)

Hua Chang Group

Huizhou Xinhua Chang Container Factory (South China)

China COSCO Shipping Group

Guangzhou Nansha Factory (South China)

Jinzhou Factory (North China)