For more than 140 years, Nippon Paint Marine has been driving innovation and development within marine coatings, by consistently delivering cutting-edge solutions. The company’s customer-centric focus remains central to everything it does at Nippon Paint Marine, nurturing a detailed understanding of the challenges its customers face in a complex operating environment.
As the industry adapts to ever more stringent global and regional regulations, designed to achieve IMO decarbonization targets, so must the solutions that are developed to support them. Research, development and innovation are fundamental to ensuring technology can keep up with this change, which is the reason why innovation has always been a core pillar of Nippon Paint Marine’s business.
This unwavering commitment to evolve with the industry has led to the development of ground-breaking technologies that have greatly enhanced the performance of our coatings. For instance, Nippon Paint Marine’s patented hydrogel water trapping technology incorporates a water affinitive polymer with three-dimensional structure that doesn’t dissolve in water and performs a continuous effect. By incorporating this technology into antifouling coatings, such as FASTAR, the company can significantly reduce hull to water friction. The hydrogel in FASTAR works by trapping a microscopic layer of water on to the hull’s surface as the ship travels through the seawater, effectively smoothing the water flow around the hull. This technology has delivered proven reductions in fuel cost and emissions by up to 8%, compared to other silyl-acrylate SPC systems manufactured without hydrogel.
Although efforts to reduce carbon emissions through vessel efficiencies is a key priority for Nippon Paint Marine’s customers, so too is the continued protection of the marine environment. The release of AQUATERRAS marked a significant step forward in coating technology as the world’s first 100% biocide free hull coating. Following years of dedicated work by our R&D team, AQUATERRAS’ biocide free self-polishing coating adopts technology developed in the pharmaceutical sector, utilizing medical anti-thrombogenic polymer technology. With its micro-domain structure, AQUATERRAS naturally repels any biological adhesion onto its surface. The constant exposure of its active micro-domain structure to seawater results in continuous self-polishing, which smooths the hull’s surface as it travels through the water, helping to maintain performance. Not only has AQUATERRAS been proven to have minimal impact on the marine environment, its reduced hull-to-water friction has been found to lower vessel emissions by up to 10%.
Alongside the continued development of our current product line, our dedicated R&D team are working hard on the next generation in hydrogel-based solutions. Furthermore, looking to the future, we will continue to maintain a leading role in coatings industry by expanding our range of low VOC products, introducing ultra-high-solid epoxy coatings and unveiling methanol-resistant solutions.
The maritime industry is going through a significant period of transition. Ship owners and operators are having to adapt their operations to engage with more sustainable practices as they seek to dramatically curtail carbon emissions from their vessels. At the same time, they need to ensure operational efficiency is not impacted. This is a significant challenge, and it is Nippon Paint Marine’s role, as a global coating solutions provider, to supply new and increasingly more innovative technologies that will drive positive change for the maritime industry and for the marine environment.