ICI Paints Group

Company profile

ICI Paints Group subordinate to ICI Group is one of the largest paint producers in the world. Around 50 million households in the world use ICI paints each year. If the cans of ICI paints are stacked up, it would be 13 000 times the height of the Mount Everest. ICI Paints Group has constructed 49 paint production plants in 25 countries of the world. Products are sold in 120 countries and hold a leading market position in many countries. The company owns quite a few world-famous brands of building decoration paints such as Dulux, Glidden, Devoe, Cuprinol, Maxilite Plus and Maxilite.

Market guide

Since the first visit made by ICI Group to China, it has paid great attention to the Asian market and especially the Chinese market and also made investments in Asia and China. To meet the needs in the development of the Chinese market, ICI Paints Group set up business offices in Beijing and Shanghai respectively in 1984 and 1990. It established ICI Paints (China) Co., Ltd. in 1992 and invested US$24 million in Guangzhou in the construction of Guangzhou Plant in 1994. It also established ICI Paints (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. in Shanghai in 1995 and invested US$40 million in the construction of its first fully-automatic paint production line in 1998.     China has always been a huge market with great potential for ICI Group. Besides the two modernized plants in Shanghai and Guangzhou, business offices have been set up in 10 major cities and business representatives are stationed in most medium and small cities. Guangzhou Plant and Shanghai Plant passed the international certification of BSIISO9002 respectively in 1997 and 1999. They both acquired the internal certification of MRPIIA in 2000 and passed the international certification of BSIISO14001 and ISO9001 in December 2001. Several products made by ICI Paints Group such as Dulux second-generation 5-in-1 walling paint have passed the “CCEL China Environment Label Certification” and the company has become one of the earliest coating producers that have acquired the certificate in China.

Product research and development

According to the reports published by China Xinhua News Agency, there are many people suffered from the poisoning of household decoration pollution in China each year. To protect the health of residents, we must use ‘green’ paints and coatings with safety and environmental friendly.    ICI Dulux walling paints that are very popular in the market today are produced by ICI Paints Group, one of the largest suppliers of building decoration paints in the world. Interior/exterior decoration coatings and protection coatings produced by ICI Paints Group account for a half of the world's total paint consumption.    In terms of research and development, ICI Paints Group put a total of GBL135 million in the sector of safety, health and environmental protection in 2000 alone. Expenses in environmental protection accounted for 50% of the total investment. ICI Paints Group is the first paint producer in the world that adds no lead and mercury in paint products.      ICI Paints (China) Co., Ltd. is implementing the ICI product assurance system with worldwide uniform standards. In addition to waterborne walling paints and waterborne wooden product paints that have acquired the environmental label in China, the company also took the lead on July 1st, 2002 in passing all the standards defined in the “Limits of Hazardous Substances in Interior Walling Coatings of Interior Building Decoration Materials” recently issued by the State Quality Supervision and Testing Administration for nationwide compulsory implementation and acquired the certificate of green building materials in China. On July 20th, 2002 China Environmental Label Certification Commission and the State Environmental Protection Administration jointly issued the new edition of the “Technical Requirements on Waterborne Coating Environmental Label Products”. ICI Paints (China) Co., Ltd. became one of the first coating enterprises that have passed the new standard. New environmental friendly products such as golden-packaged Dulux 5-in-1 paints, Dulux full-effect walling paints have recently been put in the market.