by fishboat » Sun Jun 16, 2019 9:55 am
My career was in the coatings industry..waterbased graphic arts and industrial coatings base-components along with the solvent based acrylic portion acrylic urethane industrial coatings. Our customers where the big paint manufactures you all know..and a few you don't.
It's unusual that a company would make a large formula change within a known-successful product as the customers will know, right away. This would potentially open, in this case, PPG to downstream liability claims due to performance failures. Changing a product formula without notice is a recipe for ($$$$$) disaster..however..significantly changing a marginally profitable product formula with notice to customers is somewhat common. Though, more often, customers will be given a choice of sticking with the original formula (with the same name, if the major sales are in one specific market with a few major customers, or with a different name)..both at a higher price. Delivering great performance costs more money as the raw materials used will be more expensive than the base-market commodity(lower performance) materials that are sold. When PPG took over, the marketeers would do a product-margin review and "fix" the low margin products to make the business more profitable..this is what marketeers get paid for.
Good, high-performing products are seldom "shelved" as all the costly processes to create --> RDE, Regulatory clearances, Reg documentation/registrations, commercialization, supply chain, process scaleup, process optimization...generating customer demand & validating high performance............................................lot's of stuff...are all done and the entire setup is ready to make money.
When you talk to PPG..ask if the same formula/formulation is available under a different label or in a different market. If so, it'll likely cost you more, but it may be available.
It's possible they took the old formulation off the market due to some (new) regulatory issue. If that's the case, they'd have no choice but to walk away from it..no one likes this as it leaves easy-good money on the table. Success is hard won..they hate doing this.
It's also possible the material had poor sales and a poor margin(using the old cost-base)..in which case it's gone..and they'd be glad to be rid of it.