A Materials Science Company

Detaching Growth from Environmental Footprint

A commitment to sustainability through apex innovation

Paints & Coatings Industry hasn’t changed in over 100 years

Since 2007 the “Self – Priming”, “Paint and Primer in one can” and “one coat color collection” marketing strategies have continued the convention of “regular” performance. Rooted in a century’s old dependency on Titanium Dioxide [Tio2] these traditional coatings still require multiple coats on both painted and unpainted surfaces. They retail for a lot and quietly generate the Systemic Hyper-Problem in massive CO2, life-cycle materials and energy wastes that the consumer financed Re-use and Recycle system [the second and third “R”] cannot handle.

How do you then define quality? We believe in the first “R” – Reduce. A maximum reduction in Tio2 and all peripheral materials leads to control of the life-cycle and minimizes the carbon footprint of the entire supply value chain.

Control Tio2
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Control Coats
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Control Costs/CO2/Wastes™

Read more…

Through the Self-Build Technology™ Platform [Never a primer or 2nd coat any surface], the only sustainable coatings system in the world, we offer freedom from the chains that bind a global industry: multiple coats and heavy carrying costs both environmentally & economically whether you’re a raw material supplier, a manufacturer, distributor, retailer or end user.

This is the ‘end game’ and the last frontier in paint sustainability.

Nobilis brings much needed relief to one of the world’s dirtiest, excessive and underregulated industries through the most significant advancement since the move from oil-based systems to latex in the 1950’s.

Arkema 2

“We see sustainability as a purpose, as a reason for doing business, and as a benefit to be included by design. Any sustainable solution needs to perform AND be economically practical.”

Richard Jenkins
SVP Coating Solutions
Arkema

PCI Magazine

“PHILADELPHIA – The Dow Chemical Company (Dow) has been named a winner of the 2013 U.S. Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for its development of EVOQUE pre-composite polymer technology. This Dow product helps coatings formulators improve paint performance properties while using less titanium dioxide (TiO2), a white pigment that is energy intensive to manufacture but ubiquitous in architectural paint for its ability to provide quality hiding.”

Paint & Coatings Industry Magazine

Dow Coating

“Hiding is at the heart of every paint formulation and without TiO2, we would not have paint as we know it today,”… “But TiO2 has been stretched to its limits, both in terms of hiding efficiency and supply.”

Joan Schuller
Dow Coating Materials

Mike Stucky

“As we navigate the challenges of environmental degradation, the significance of collaboration in furthering sustainability efforts cannot be overstated… By recognising sustainability as a shared responsibility, understanding the interconnected needs throughout the value chain and ensuring accountability, companies can drive meaningful change.”

Mike Stucky
PPG Customer Sustainability Business Partner

Jim Reader

“There is increasing interest and demand for improving the sustainability of the coatings industry. This comes from consumers, applicators, producers, and suppliers…Companies will need to partner together…The first pillar focuses on minimizing the carbon footprint of the production process by using resources more efficiently…The second pillar targets improving the performance (handprint) by developing new products and technologies to help formulators reduce their environmental impact.”

Jim Reader
Senior Technical Manager
Evonik Corporation

Gehrenkemper

“…due to the high price of Tio2, a great deal of energy is being expended on coatings development with a view to lowering the content of Tio2 in paint…”

Gisela Gehrenkemper
Book Editor
European Coatings Tech Report
Vincentz Network

UN SDGs

Achieving 5 UN SDGs now,
not in 2030/40/50

Proptech Report

Self-Build Technology™
is Sustainable Proptech for New Construction

Chemours

“63 percent of coatings professionals identify balancing sustainability and cost as their greatest challenge to advancing sustainability in their coatings design.”

Chemours

TDMA

“High quality paints formulated with high TiO2 content have the lowest environmental footprint as paints formulated with high TiO2 content have the highest opacity, meaning fewer layers of paint are required to achieve the desired result.”

Titanium Dioxide Manufacturers Association (TDMA)

Earth Action

“It is worth noting that a substantial portion of paint consists of plastic polymers, which poses a high risk of environmental contamination and contributes to global plastic pollution.”

Earth Action (EA)

Arkema

“We are in the middle of a deep industry transformation driven by new expectations from customers, citizens, investors, governmental bodies and our own employees. That expectation impacts the entire value chain.” … “We need new ways of thinking and acting to meet these new expectations and to focus on connecting the downstream consumer and market needs to upstream innovation capabilities.”

Richard Jenkins
SVP Coating Solutions
Arkema

PPG

“our value chain faces the challenge of collaborating to identify ways to improve the life cycle sustainability performance of our coating products while enhancing their quality and aesthetic variables.”

Mats Hägerström
EMEA Sustainability Leader
PPG

OMYA

“Together we can do more with less, being focused on lowering the carbon footprint in end applications like paints & coatings.”

Nadine Nicolai
Global Business Development Director Construction
OMYA

Perstorp

“No company is greener than its suppliers.”

Jenny Klevås
Marketing Director
Perstorp

Arkema 2

“…understanding each other’s challenges, and bringing performance forward…an opportunity to create new fields of opportunities that the first movers will be able to capture.”

Helene Pernot
Head of Sustainable Offer
Arkema Coating Solutions

Walmart

“We must all take urgent, sustained action to reverse nature loss and emissions before we reach a tipping point from which we will not recover. People have pushed past the earth’s natural limits. Healthy societies, resilient economies and thriving businesses rely on nature.”

Kathleen McLaughlin
Executive Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer for Walmart, Inc.
and President of the Walmart Foundation

Diebold

“In fact…the opacity benefit of TiO2 decreases as TiO2 levels increase, and there is an upper limit where adding too much TiO2 can even become detrimental to the overall light scattering power of the paint. In such cases, the only way to achieve complete opacity is to increase the thickness of the paint film.”

Dr. Michael Diebold

ChemQuest

“While optimization of TiO2 usage is an option, complete replacement or majority replacement is a dream. The reason is simple: TiO2 boasts the highest refractive index of any commercially-available material (no material can match its efficiency at bending light waves away from the surface of a substrate, creating the highest opacity in the thinnest gauge film). While products such as ROPAQUE™ provide a modicum of opacity, they can have significant drawbacks in typical end uses. Bottom line is that besides death and taxes, one can also count on TiO2!”

Joe Mass
The ChemQuest Group

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Watch, Read, Listen

Titanium dioxide: “Optimisation has long been a salient conversation”

Tony Margani of Nobilis describes a new technology in advanced light scattering and Tio2 optimisation and gives his opinion on what effect this technology could have on the coatings industry.

European Coatings — December 21, 2023

Finding Bandwidth to Innovate and Elevate Your Industry with Tony Margani

On this episode of Rocket Your Business for Trade Contractors we chat with Tony Margani from Nobilis about the ability of trade contractors to innovate within their company while simultaneously elevating their trade with products and services that make the world a better place.

Rocket Your Business for Trade Contractors — November 22, 2023

How do pros reconcile the economic and environmental harm of TiO2 with the need for it?

Tony Margani is a fourth-generation painter in Toronto and the executive VP of Science & Environment for Nobilis, a research and commercialization firm in the global paints and coatings industry.

inPaint — Winter 2023/2024

Paint & Coatings Industry Magazine Feature: Self-Build Technology vs. TiO2

For the last century, titanium dioxide (TiO2) remains the immutable material in paint and coatings. Naturally occurring, finite, and without a synthetic substitute, its opacifying effects are irreplaceable (whiteness and refractive index value). Paradoxically, these same benefits produce negative outcomes in both economy and environment through high cost in formula and carbon footprint intensity.

PCI Magazine — April 2024

Sustainable Paint Index: A Shift in Architectural Coatings

This article delves into topics that do not come from the industry’s customary marketing perspective (e.g. reviewing the hottest colours and the emotions they evoke). It will come from a position of tangible, unprecedented environmental, social, and governance (ESG) through sustainable property technology is it developed and deployed from Toronto it is changing the way the world thinks about paint’s relationship to the environment.

Construction Canada — June 2024

The Tio2 killer – How to take global consumption from 50% to 17%

Tonino F. Margani, Nobilis, tackles the issue of sustainability and TiO2 in the coatings industry, highlighting the challenges involved with one of the industry’s most widely used raw materials.

Polymers Paint Colour Journal — May 27, 2024