Surface Coatings Industry in Kenya: Glory Paints Set to Double Revenue in the Next Few Years

Interview with Kulbir Panesar, Director at Nasib Industrial Products Ltd (Glory Paints)

What is NIPL’s background?

NIPL stands for Nasib Industrial Products Ltd, and it was started by my father 30 years ago. He used to be in the fabrication business, and as a cost saving initiative, he started making his own primers for metals. These are the red oxide primers that metal fabricators put on their products before they turn them over to the plants. He made these primers for in-house use and over the years, he started trying to market the primers to other fabricators in the marketplace and that is where Glory Paints started. From the primers, he has grown the business to other lines including decorative, automotive and wood finishes and other industry coatings as well. Once the paint business started picking up, he stopped fabrication completely and focused on paint.

What is your company’s competitive advantage?

The paint we manufacture is under the brand Glory Paints, so the competitive advantage we have as being a medium-sized enterprise in the paint industry in Kenya, we are able to give personalized service to our clients. A lot of the clients who have shifted to us have done so because of the poor service they received from the bigger players in the market. We are able to give fast and efficient service. For example, if they have a specific shade they want, or if they have urgent orders, we are able to facilitate that with our processing times. Another advantage we have is the pricing compared to the bigger companies. Being a smaller brand, we are forced to discount our price from the leaders in the market to attract more customers, but quality wise, we try to maintain all of the best qualities in the market.

Who are your clientele and what customers do you attract?

Half of our clients are hardware businesses which are in areas outside of Nairobi where we are distributing our paints. Within Nairobi, we have a lot of direct clientele like the bus bodybuilders, contractors in the construction industry, interior designers, companies that make furniture, and a lot of garages that buy a lot of our paints.

As one of the top five paint companies in Kenya, what is your assessment of the industry?

In Kenya, the industry is very competitive. We have over 100 paint manufacturers locally just in Kenya, so it is a highly competitive market where there are a lot of price wars and undercutting of prices of different companies. In that sense, we have to be very efficient to be able to compete with most of the smaller companies that have come up over the years. It has a good growth compared to the economy itself because of the continuous development, which is happening in developing countries like Kenya and its surrounding neighbors.

What products do you manufacture?

We manufacture all of our products locally. The range of our paints includes decorative paint, which is the usual paint for buildings and architecture paint. That is our biggest market. Apart from that, we also make automotive paints mostly for trucks and pickups. We have wood finishes, as well as industrial paints for metalworks. We also do quite a lot of adhesives, which is wood glue or contact glue, for the upholstery industry.

What are some of Glory Paints’ innovations?

One of them is an antibacterial paint which we focus on mainly for schools, hospitals, and restaurants. Our latest project being the Nairobi West Hospital, which is one of the biggest hospitals in Nairobi. We have painted the entire interior of the hospital with our antibacterial paint. We also have a wood finish called Super Luxury wood finish. It is one of the best wood finishes there is in the market in terms of the cost levels and hardness of the finish itself. Another product that we have developed recently is a silicon-based weather guard paint. Industry wide, it is something that almost all of the paint companies have started making, but we have been doing it for about three to four years.

Do you market to other parts of East Africa, and if not, do you have plans to expand?

Currently, we market only in Kenya, and we have a couple of distributors who distribute to Somalia and some to Uganda as well, but our focus is just on the Kenyan market for now. However, we are looking to expand into the neighboring countries in the near future.

Apart from the Nairobi hospital project, do have any other major projects going on at the moment?

The latest project that we are still in the completion stages of is the Imaara Shopping Mall, which is a new mall that has just come up on Mombasa Road in Nairobi. That is one of the biggest projects we have taken on. It is one of the biggest malls in Nairobi, so it is one of our flagship projects. Internally, we are currently building an office block at the same location where we have our factory. We have some vacant land in front of the factory on which we are building the office block. It is an office block and warehousing facility. What we are planning to do is expand our current factory by shifting the warehousing to the new facility, which will leave us with more room for the factory and all of our offices in the one compound. It is going to help us a lot in terms of managing the business and growing it from one location. And within the office block, we are also opening a new showroom which will help us to display our products in a presentable way within our factory.

Do you have any specific success stories?

The success stories are mostly the projects that we work on. In terms of that, the mall is one of the biggest projects we have done. The Nairobi West Hospital, which is one of the biggest hospitals in the area, is one of our flagship projects as well. Another successful initiative that we have taken on is an ISO certification that we got just last year. We got ISO certification 9001:2015. From our side, we try really hard to make sure the quality of our paints is up to par, and we have ISO to show for that.

Note: (ISO 9001:2015 specifies requirements for a quality management system when an organization: a) needs to demonstrate its ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements; and b) aims to enhance customer satisfaction through the effective application of the system, including processes for improvement of the system and the assurance of conformity to customer and applicable statutory and regulatory requirements).

Often there are debates about paint harming the environment, so what is your approach to that?

Most oil-based paints are a bit harmful to the environment, so from our side we focus a lot on decorative paints which are water-based paints and a major segment of our business. We advocate a lot for them because they are more environmentally friendly. Apart from our products, we also have a solvent recycling plant within our factory. Any used solvent is recycled so we can reuse it, which definitely reduces the harm solvents have on the environment. We also have a water recycling plant. So, any water that we are using for cleaning, or for paint, the ponds we make our paints in we use the plant to recycle the water to reuse it.

What is your medium-term vision for the company for the next two to three years?

We have been growing quite a bit and now with my son on board the business and my brother, who has also been with the business for the past five years, we have really been pushing for growth. Year on year, we have been having about 15% growth, so in the next thee to five years we are planning to double our revenues. We are really aggressive with our marketing, and we are looking to capture more and more of the market. We are collaborating with a European paint company to set up licensing manufacturing where we will be manufacturing under Iicense for them.

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