F-P’s pigments make colors shine
The Rome company’s products are used in everything from paint primers to PVC pipe.
F-P Pigments, a Finnish-based manufacturer, may not be the largest manufacturer in Rome, but Romans see the fruits of the companies work everyday and probably are completely unaware of it. The company manufactures pigments that are used in everything from paints to plastics to paper and printing inks.
Founded in Valkeakoski, Finland, 21 years ago, the company revealed its intentions to open a plant in Rome in 2010. F-P bought the former Crews Chemical building, 3 Southern Industrial Blvd., and made a $20 million investment to retrofit the building for its pigment production process.
Plant manager Gerhard Scherer said F-P had to completely re-work the foundation of the building to be able to hold the load of the heavy machinery used in its manufacturing process.
The company makes opacity pigments, which go into paints, particularly primers.
“The job of a primer is to hide what’s behind it, whether it is a drywall with mud, whether it’s fingerprints and crayons from when the kids grew up,” Scherer said. “That’s a very good market for us.” In fact it’s his bread and butter market.
The pigments are also used in paper to reduce the visibility of what is printed on the other side of the page. Scherer said the company has cultivated that market heavily over the last couple of years and have added several major paper makers as customers.
Plastics, like a PVC pipe or the shell of a pen you might write with are not naturally white. So the opacity pigments made by F-P are added to make white plastic or underneath a color coating. That way the color shows nice and crisp.”
Sales grew steadily through 2015, however 2016 did record a slight slump early in the year however Scherer said that the markets turned around again during the final quarter of the year. “Things are growing and 2017 has started quite strong,” Scherer said.
The company started six years ago running 24 hours a day, three days a week. In 2015, the schedule was pushed to 24 hours a day, four days a week. F-P retreated to three days a week in 2016 but is now in the process of running full-time four days a week and Scherer said he could foresee five days a week in the very near future.
The 24-hour run time is best for the plant because the pigments are dispersed in water and as soon as the plant shuts down, the pigment settles. “Things will clog up and get sticky so we have to clean out pipes, pumps, vessels every time we shut down so the longer we can extend the run time the better,” Scherer said.
Scherer said people driving by the plant on Shorter Industrial Boulevard often ask about a device outside the plant that looks like chimes. He explained that plastics contain a long list of components and every time those components change it impacts the durability. The device, which is a couple of rows of short thin plastic pipes, has to sit in direct sunlight for between six and nine months to measure how it reacts to direct exposure from the sun. If it doesn’t fade, it passes muster and goes to market.
The manufacturing process is highly automated, and Scherer said he has been very fortunate in attracting and retaining employees with experience in operations within the chemical industry. F-P Pigments Plant Manager Gerhard Scherer checks the durability of pigments on PVC-style pipes after they have been subjected to direct sunlight for six to nine months. Containers of chemicals sit outside the F-P Pigments plant on Southern Industrial Boulevard.
Photos by Doug Walker, Rome News-Tribune
Since the company opened six years ago the only turnover F-P Pigments
experienced was when one lab employee moved to Arizona.