COLORS
Limited Pigments:
I was told that the Quinacridone colors were developed for the auto industry and there is a limited supply of pigments available. Will these colors be available as extended color pallet that will be stocked by your company in the future?
We don"t have any problems obtaining the Quinacridone pigments for use in our products. The pigment companies do not set maximums on their products; they are more than willing to sell us 100 times the amount we currently use.
The automotive industry is the chief consumer for pigments, and after that the next market is coatings for household and industrial goods like washing machine manufacturers. When the automotive folks stop using a particular pigment, it can quickly fall into obscurity because there simply isn"t enough sales to warrant continuing to make it.
When a pigment company stops making a certain pigment, we first will secure enough pigment to continue to make it for several years. Then we look towards other companies who make that same pigment, and if they too are halting their production, we begin to search for new pigments that are similar to the one being phased out. Commonly, the automotive industry has found a better, cheaper, or easier to use pigment and thus they no longer need the other one. We"ll have Quinacridones on our palette for many years to come.
