Ranking: Europes top 25 coatings manufacturers in 2020

Our current ranking of the top-selling coatings manufacturers shows, as every year, how the European coatings manufacturers have performed in terms of turnover, export share or number of employees. A new feature is a look at the development over the last five years.

Top25 ranking largest coatings manufacturers
For the first time the Top 25 coatings manufacturer ranking takes a look at historical data. –
A total of 23.6 billion EUR – these revenues were generated by the 25 top-selling coatings manufacturers in Europe in 2019 with coatings. This sum is the result of this year’s ranking. In 2016, we started to rank paint and coatings manufacturers headquartered in Europe according to turnover.

The decisive factor here is not group or corporate sales, but the revenues generated with paints and coatings. In 2016, the sales of the top 25 were EUR 24 billion, only slightly above the total in the current ranking.

Even though the list has remained stable for the most part, especially in the top ten, there are still significant changes. Due to acquisitions, some companies such as Helios or J.W. Ostendorf are no longer part of the ranking. This year Betek Boya is no longer included, as the Turkish company was taken over by the Japanese group Nippon Paint in the first half of 2019.

* Sales figures from 2018 or ** Estimated figures

60 % of all companies have their headquarters in German speaking countries region
The companies from Germany, Austria and Switzerland are the largest group in terms of number with 13 companies (52%). Together they represent a turnover of 8.37 billion EUR, which corresponds to a share of 35 % of the total of 23.5 billion EUR. However, when looking at turnover, the Netherlands is the most important country. The Akzo Nobel Group alone has a larger turnover than the 13 German-speaking companies in this ranking combined.

Strong turnover from Scandinavia
Although the Nordic countries with five companies represent significantly fewer players, the turnover of the companies from Denmark, Finland and Norway totals EUR 4.4 billion.

Compared to the first ranking in 2016, which was based on the turnover in 2015, Jotun from Norway and the Finnish company Teknos in particular show a remarkable development. Jotun increased its turnover by EUR 538 million within five years. The number of employees and the number of production sites increased only slightly.

Turnover and employee development
Teknos expanded strongly through acquisitions. The turnover increased by more than 100 million EUR. The number of employees increased by 30% and the number of production sites doubled. Hempel was also able to increase its turnover significantly last year, mainly due to the acquisitions of J.W. Ostendorf in Germany and Crowne in the UK. However, this was only able to compensate for the sales losses of the previous years. At the same time, the number of employees has increased significantly.

At Akzo Nobel, group sales in particular fell sharply as a result of the spin-off of the specialty chemicals division, which now operates under the name Nouryon. This is now offset by a significantly lower number of employees. However, the coatings business is now also lower than five years ago, falling from around EUR 10 billion to just under EUR 9.3 billion.

The French manufacturer Cromology also suffered major losses in the coating business. Although the company has stable group sales, the business with paints and coatings has almost halved in recent years.

Methodical:
Since not all companies have uniform annual financial statements, some companies are also listed with sales from 2018. For paint and coatings manufacturers headquartered outside the euro zone, sales have been converted into EUR. Our ranking is sorted according to the turnover generated with coatings. Sales from other business segments are included in the Group sales, but are not used for the ranking.

If you want to compare the current ranking with previous years, we recommend that you take a look at the Top 25 from 2019, Top 25 from 2018, Top 25 from 2017 and the ranking from 2016..