RIYADH, 16 November 2007 — The paint market in Saudi Arabia is witnessing a strong demand amid real estate boom and other government development projects in the Kingdom, a paint expert told Arab News.

Sigma Paint area manager in the central province Dennis Snijders said that Saudis use about 450 million liters of paint annually in villa construction, noting that around 26,000 villas are put up in Saudi Arabia yearly. But the major factor that have played a role in boosting paint demand in Saudi Arabia is “the several and massive development projects that Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has started.”

The Saudi stock market crash in 2006, he said, has positively affected the paint market because “after that, many people have turned to invest their money in real estate instead of stock market which raised the demand ever bigger.”

Snijders said Sigma has increased its manufacturing capacity to fulfill the growing local demand on paint, adding that Sigma controls around 7 percent of the total Saudi paint market which is estimated at SR2.2 billion. He forecast that the company will achieve a 13 percent growth in decorative paint by the end of this year.

Holland has exported 22.75 million euros of paint to Saudi Arabia until August 2007. Morever, consumers’ recent tendency to use glass and marbles has not affected paint sales, he said.

“The usage of unpainted fascia is incomparable to the number of painted ones. This is because it is restricted to commercial buildings only.” He said “paint will remain a top choice in any construction, people like to change the color of their buildings from time to another which is something that cannot be applied on glass or marbles.”

As the market for paints expands, he observed the rise in the number of local companies in the paint market that aim to compete with the international ones. However, they might face obstacles on quality “since many of local companies are new in the market. They lack the experience. It’s impossible to compare quality of a company that enters the market for only 25 years, against us (Sigma) which have been in the industry for 285 years.”

According to a world ranking report in 2006, Sigma is the second largest paint company worldwide.

“We have operations in 40 countries, with 2 production plants in the Kingdom (Dammam and Alkhobar) and one in Egypt. These supply the Middle East markets,” he said.

The two factories in the Kingdom shows that “Saudi Arabia is our biggest market in the region ” considering that Saudis, in general, paint their houses — both external and internal.

As a manifestation of its ever growing presence in the Kingdom, Sigma is set to open its new location at Olaya Street. Ambassador of the Netherlands to Saudi Arabia Nicolas Beets is scheduled to unveil the “new family-oriented shop,” Shnijder said.

“For the first time there will be a section especially for visitors to view art paint and be provided with the latest development in the paint world as well as receiving advices from specialists to help them with their choices.”

Regarding Saudization, he said “our goal is to let Saudis speak to Saudis. For this reason we have increased our Saudi employees 31 percent. We provide them with intensive training courses in Holland to get a deeper knowlege of the paint and its applications.”

He added that the company also provides free training sessions for anyone, “not necessary our employees” — but those who are keen to work in the paint market.

“The reason for this voluntary initiative is because we are committed to share our experience and reputation of producing good quality paint that dates back to 1722,” Snijders said.