OSAKA, Japan - Nippon Paint Co., Ltd. (NPC), has finalized its purchase of the majority of Rohm and Haas Company’s (ROH) Automotive Coatings business, and will introduce NB Coatings, Inc., to serve North American customers.

OSAKA, Japan - Nippon Paint Co., Ltd. (NPC), has finalized its purchase of the majority of Rohm and Haas Company’s (ROH) Automotive Coatings business, and will introduce NB Coatings, Inc., to serve North American customers.

NPC purchased the wholly owned Rohm and Haas business in North America and Rohm and Haas’ 50-percent share of the companies’ joint ventures, Morton Nippon Coatings (MNC) in North America and Nippon Bee Chemical (NBC) in Japan. The second joint venture, NBC, will remain under the same company name. This purchase and introduction of NB Coatings unites the decade-long partnering organizations under one strategy to create a leading position in the North American plastic automotive coatings market.

John Culbertson, former vice president of Rohm and Haas and business unit director for Automotive Coatings, will assume the position of NB Coatings president. 

The businesses acquired by NPC collectively represent a leading position in the global automotive plastic paint market with strong positions in North America, Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea. The predecessor company to the Rohm and Haas business, Bee Chemical, was originally founded in Chicago in 1945 and has been collaborating with NPC in this market since the 1960s with the first joint venture established in Japan in 1971.