In 2025, Mitsui Chemicals made biobased history. It announced that shipping company Kegoya had chosen its biobased resin for ballast tanks onboard its liquid ammonia tankers.
Ship ballasts hold seawater, a highly corrosive substance. Functional coatings can slow the pace at which this happens.
The announcement marked a milestone for biobased coatings – until recently, ballast coatings had been made entirely from petroleum.
However, shipping is just one industry where this tech is making inroads.
For the last several years, biobased coatings have proven their performance capabilities in some of the most demanding industrial applications: automotive manufacturing and construction. The whole market is set to reach $29.4 billion by 2032, representing a CAGR rate of 9.75%.
Here is why biobased coatings matter and why heavy industries are adopting them.
What do coatings do?
Coatings are thin films that keep everything from steel, wood, and concrete structures to textiles and packaging more durable and functional. Unlike paints, coatings serve a practical function beyond aesthetics.
Despite their usefulness, most coatings on the market are made from petroleum, meaning they come with a big carbon footprint. They also tend to be made with solvents, which release harmful volatile compounds once applied.
Granted, coatings are more sustainable than they used to be. In the 2000s, less solvent-heavy formulations were adopted by automotives and industrial paints, thanks to environmental regulations.
However, many of these newer coatings are still problematic. While less toxic compared to predecessors, they are still petroleum-based. This means a high carbon footprint, limiting the extent to which companies using them can decarbonise.
In short, these everyday chemicals pose health and planetary hazards. Consumers and industry are now demanding new formulations that have a lighter impact.
Why plants are better
Today, high-performance coatings can be made from all kinds of renewable materials. Biobased coatings typically range between 20-40% biomass content.
Biobased coatings come with a lower carbon footprint compared to traditional chemicals. In some cases, they also have a lighter impact on human health and biodiversity.
Plant oils, plant matter, nutshells, and wood are just some of the natural materials that can become industrial coatings.
Reducing ship pollution
Before Mitsui’s biobased ballast coating, renewable coatings for marine vessels had been stuck at the experimental stage for years. The rigorous performance demands made developing biobased alternatives in this application a huge technical challenge.
Now that biobased resins are finally proving themselves at sea, more options for the shipping industry could emerge. Hull coatings are a major target of R&D right now due to the toxic ecological impacts of traditional formulations.
Ship hulls need coatings as protection against the barnacles and biofilms that accumulate on them over time in a process known as biofouling.
Coatings to limit biofouling are paramount from a cost perspective. Shells and other growth increase friction between the ship and the water. This ramps up fuel consumption. The build-up of organic matter can also impair rudders.
However, existing anti-biofouling coatings are highly toxic to marine ecosystems. Around the world, sea and river sediments are contaminated by decades of poisonous coating materials emitted by ship hulls.
Indeed, the toxicity is the point. These coatings primarily keep organisms off the ship hull by releasing poisonous heavy metals, like copper, or the fossil chemical DBT.
Several European research projects are working on less toxic anti-biofouling chemicals.
One of the biggest is BioSHIP, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK). The objective is a biodegradable ship coating that requires less toxic metals to fulfil its function. It is investigating biobased polymers like polylactide or chitosan for this, which can both degrade at sea.
Construction and interiors
Marine vessels are an emerging application for biobased coatings. Meanwhile, construction is the biggest end-user.
Typically, a single construction project will draw on a wide range of coatings for different applications, whether in architectural paints, wood varnishes, or other protective finishes.
Biobased coatings offer important sustainability benefits for construction, which contributed 33% of the world’s carbon footprint in 2022.
Bulky materials like cement and concrete get most attention in discussions around decarbonising the sector. Yet coatings, which are used in every building project, are also an environmental concern. Lifecycle studies suggest that biobased polyurethane and epoxy resins can have a much lower global warming impact compared to fossil alternatives.
Around the world, governments have introduced laws to boost the energy efficiency of buildings. Many, including Denmark and the UK, are now working towards new laws limiting embodied carbon in construction – in other words, the carbon emissions used to make the construction materials themselves.
One of the companies poised to grow its market share under these regulatory conditions is AzkoNobel, which recently launched a waterborne wood coating that is sprayable, opaque, and 20% biobased content.
In addition to sustainability, biobased coatings can also offer health benefits. AzkoNobel produces a biobased wall paint for the Chinese market that absorbs harmful air pollutants like formaldehyde, which is commonly found in household items.
PT Mowilex Indonesia makes a similar product – a 28% renewable content paint that similarly removes formaldehyde from the air.
In 2024, Sherwin-Williams – the largest global supplier of architectural coatings – also launched a biobased and waterborne wood coating. Covestro is currently expanding capacity in Asia-Pacific for biobased coating raw materials, targeting the construction and infrastructure markets specifically.
Automotives: interiors and exteriors
Aside from construction, automotives are the other top industrial user of biobased coatings.
Coatings play a critical role in car manufacturing, both for interior and exterior components.
As well as construction, AzkoNobel’s biobased coatings are making headlines in the automotive space too. Currently, the company is supplying biobased paint to KIA motors for its EV9 SUV made using pine rosin and rapeseed.
Nippon Paint is a key player in the automotive biobased coatings space. In 2022, it jointly introduced a biobased automotive coating with partner Covestro. Its major technical feat was a formulation that enabled matte-finish with gradient colours. The companies re-confirmed their partnership by signing an agreement in November 2025 to co-develop more low carbon coatings.
Nippon Paint independently makes a biobased waterborne polyurethane resin that can be applied to wood furniture and interiors, as well as to the exterior of cars. The company’s aim now is to increase its market share in both the car and interiors markets, tapping the demand for environmentally-compliant car materials as well as consumer demand for healthier buildings.
A scalable product
Biobased coatings are scaling rapidly compared to many other biobased products. Two factors explain why.
First is supply chain maturity. While other biomass feedstock supply chains remain in their infancy, the raw materials and precursor materials needed for renewable coatings are already being mass-produced.
This means biobased coatings can piggyback off already-mature feedstock supply chains, limiting the capital investment needed to set up production.
Second, these chemicals are in demand from some of the world’s largest manufacturing industries, including automotives. Knowing mass market demand is out there gives producers additional confidence to invest in the product.
The scalability of biobased coatings is apparent through Arkema’s new partnership with Catalyxx. Last year, the companies announced they are building a value chain that supports biobased coating production.
Catalyxx will be to make the feedstock, which will consist of biobased alcohols made from bioethanol. Bioethanol is a widely-used vehicle fuel that can be made from diverse plant-based feedstocks, including waste from industries like agriculture.
Arkema will turn Catalyxx’s biobased alcohols into acrylic resins set for mass-market applications like sustainable infrastructure and electric autos – industries that are booming, particularly in Asia.
Chemicals clampdown in the EU
Europe is currently the biggest market for biobased coatings and demand in the region could spike further thanks to new sustainability regulations.
Foremost is the EU REACH Regulation, set to come into force this year. It will restrict the use of forever chemicals across most product categories, applying both to EU-based manufacturers and foreign importers.
Forever chemicals are a class of eco-toxic chemicals used in almost every industry, including coatings. The substances have been used for decades in textiles, packaging, solar panels, and sealants for their superior water, oil, and stain resistance.
These chemicals are extremely toxic and do not biodegrade, remaining present in the environment for hundreds of years.
The EU’s landmark regulation will push manufacturers, including in the coatings space, to rethink the raw materials. New biobased chemicals can offer a way to maintain functional properties, including in coatings, without the toxic after-affects. EU projects like Tornado are already investigating PFAS-free coatings that can replace these chemicals.
The EU REACH regulation shows that compliance pressures are pushing manufacturers to adopt alternative materials. Producers innovating in biobased coatings are set to reap the rewards of these regulatory tailwinds.
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