The regulatory side of the pigment industry remains a challenge, although with the change of the government in the US, there might be some changes going forward.

Colorants come in many forms. They can be solids like pigments or liquids like dyes. They can be organic, inorganic (titanium dioxide and carbon black), or specialty pigments like metallics and fluorescents. They bring the color we see to life, particularly in packaging and printed materials.

It is a major market. MarketsandMarkets has the organic pigment at $4.4 billion in 2024, growing at a CAGR of 6.5%. Global Market Insights has the inorganic pigments market at $28.4 billion in 2023, with a CAGR of over 3.9%.

The regulatory side of the pigment industry remains a challenge, although with the change of the government in the US, there might be some changes going forward.

The Color Pigments Manufacturing Association (CPMA) represents pigments manufacturers in North America, Asia and Europe, pigments processors and converters, distributors/importers, and plastics masterbatch companies.

David Wawer, CPMA executive director, said that the question of the major regulatory issues facing the U.S. pigments industry is complex. Wawer offered his thoughts on how the Trump Administration will handle the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). 

“Let’s look first at the broader pro-business philosophy and pro-manufacturing agenda of the Trump Administration,” Wawer noted. “Efforts are taking place across a wide spectrum of federal government agencies to reduce or eliminate costly regulatory requirements for U.S. manufacturing companies.” 

Wawer observed that this philosophical initiative will benefit existing U.S. color industry manufacturing companies, as every federal regulation enacted during the past 15 years has come with a new cost to manufacturers and importers. 

“With respect to the EPA, very broad regulatory reform actions will result in substantial economic benefit to U.S. color industry manufacturers,” Wawer pointed out. “Examples include redefining waterways, modifying motor vehicle CAFé requirements, and eliminating the Obama-era policy defining greenhouse gases. EPA’s decision six months ago to reassign existing staff to the New Chemicals Program to accelerate approval of new chemicals (PMNS) directly benefits CPMA members with U.S. manufacturing facilities. EPA has also proposed regulatory changes to the principle regulation governing the TSCA Risk Evaluation and Risk Management Rule for existing chemicals.” 

US EPA and CI Pigment Violet 29 Risk Evaluation-Risk Management

There is also the EPA’s evaluation of CI Pigment Violet 29, which is likely to change course.

“This story began in early 2017 after EPA announced the first 10 substances for risk evaluation,” Wawer said. “After four years of engagement with the agency on what was supposed to be a no-unreasonable risk determination, EPA published in early 2021 its conclusion that PV 29 presented unreasonable risk to manufacturing workers, but no unreasonable risk to the public or

the environment. 

“Turns out that the first part of this decision used flawed science and incorrect assumptions, ignoring valid industry information,” he added. “As a result, CPMA invested significant resources to conduct scientific studies about PV 29 manufacturing processes in response to the flawed assumptions and lack of science employed by EPA staff to reach its 2021 determination. 

After four years of sound science advocacy by CPMA and its downstream customer industry trade associations, EPA published a draft Risk Management Rule in December 2024 for CI Pigment Violet 29,” Wawer reported. “That draft rule contains key components of the flawed science/no science rationale used by EPA for its risk evaluation determination in 2021. CPMA provided comments with industry recommendations to the Trump Administration in early 2025. Challenges with the PV 29 Risk Management Rule, as currently drafted, will continue into 2026.”

TSCA Risk Evaluation and Risk Management for Future Pigments

That brings us to future evaluations of pigments.

“The assumption that particle size could result in lung overload for any chemical substance in particulate form is the flawed science argument used by EPA in the PV 29 Risk Evaluation Determination,” Wawer noted. 

“If the agency were to continue to apply this non-scientific approach for future risk evaluations, then CI Pigment Yellow 83, CI Pigment Yellow 65 and CI Pigment Red 52 would also be deemed to create unreasonable risk to manufacturing workers in pigments plants, pigment dispersions plants, plastic masterbatch plants, and paint and coatings plants,” Wawer said.

“This flawed science model would also be applied to risk evaluations of carbon black (black pigments), titanium dioxide (white pigments) and iron oxide pigments,” he observed. “The USEPA has proposed, however, the incorporation of sound science/new science and recognition of specific manufacturing processes (batch processing) that would mitigate many of the flaws inherent with the PV 29 Risk Evaluation process. These rule changes are expected to be adopted by EPA in 2026.” 

Near-Shoring of Pigments Manufacturing from Asia or Europe

There is interest in bringing pigment manufacturing back to the U.S. Based upon today’s manufacturing costs, the probability of re-shoring pigments manufacturing from Europe is more likely than from Asia. 

“Expensive energy costs, chemicals of concern restrictions, carbon taxes, intermittent and unreliable energy supply, and the expansion of EU REACH may encourage companies to relocate product lines from EU manufacturing sites to the U.S. or Asia, to serve customers in these respective markets,” Wawer noted. “Green Deal product bans and related factors are already driving European chemical manufacturers to shut down plants and relocate production to regions outside the EU. 

“Asia has a well-known overcapacity of pigments manufacturing facilities, however,” he added. “What we may see next year and beyond are mergers and acquisitions of smaller pigments manufacturing companies by larger pigments companies in India and China. 

“Increases in tariffs for Chinese and Indian-sourced pigments could also result in subcontracting with US manufacturing companies to produce pigment products and raw materials for manufacturing pigments to avoid USA import tariffs,” he added. “The emerging trend is for companies to structure manufacturing and raw materials supply chains to serve specific regional markets – North America and South America, Western Europe (EU), Eastern Europe, Middle East, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Australia.” 

By: David Savastano