AkzoNobel has become the best friend of China through Dulux's human and his dog
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Buying paint for a home in China is an emotional relationship with your supplier. The courtship ritual lasts three or four months. There are repeated meetings with councillors trained in rudimentary psychology.
Rising to this Confucian challenge, Dulux is opening 15 stores a week in the country. It is pushing deeper into the "second-tier" cities (those that may not have registered on your radar screen with just 4m to 6m people, such as Ningbo) and further into the hinterland of Hubei, Hunan and Sichuan. It already has 3,000 outlets and a third of total market share on the eastern seaboard, all produced at plants up and down China.
The winning allure, surprisingly, is Dulux's old English sheepdog peering out of paint pots through a mop of white hair. "Having a dog in China has become a status symbol," said Karen Yin, Dulux's marketing director in China. "A dog represents loyalty and the warmth of the family."
You see pampered lapdogs being carried on Shanghai streets these days, often wrapped in cloaks. The ancient practice of eating the animals – let alone canine farming – is viewed with revulsion by the rising middle class, and may soon be banned.
The company's TV adverts feature the Dulux dog walking and wagging through bamboo forests with children, while the narrator explains that the paint contains bamboo chips to absorb toxins.
"The technology in our paints makes it odourless. Chinese consumers are very conscious of health risks and wary of chemicals. They often don't move into a new apartment for several months to let it breathe," she said. This cultural quirk might help to explain in part why the property vacancy rate based on electricity usage seems abnormally high in China.
Dr Wijers, a former Dutch economy minister, said China, India and Brazil are the triple spearheads of AkzoNobel's global expansion, and it is the ICI acquisition that has opened the doors.
The group is world number one in both paints and protective coatings – typically for bridges, pipelines, harbours, ships, planes and cars – with a third line in speciality chemicals. It employs 57,000 people.
"About five years ago I looked at our position in Asia, and I realised we were too late in the game. We were sixth, seventh, eighth place in different countries and far behind rivals like ICI. From a strategic point of view, the acquisition absolutely made sense."
"I understand that for the British people ICI was the bellwether of British industry, but that was a long, long time ago," he said.
The reduction of ICI to a corporate division of a Dutch rival was an inglorious end for a name that had given the world plastic, perspex and terelyne and armed the Empire.
By then ICI been led into a cul-de-sac by blunder after blunder in pursuit of "shareholder value" - that curse of UK Ltd. The Zeneca spin-off in the 1990s started the slide, and debt-driven acquisitions at the top of the market did the rest. Leverage kills. "We did it differently," said Dr Wijers, acidly.
ICI was a case of lions led by donkeys. Beneath the top echelon, managers ran "a very tight ship". If anything, the merger was a reverse takeover, at least in decorative paints. "It was not their fault that bad decisions were made," he said.
The job losses from synergies were mostly on the Continent, not in Britain, though the Georgian HQ at Manchester Square met a swift end. ICI managers came out better than level. "We decided not to impose our way on them but learn from their success, and apply it across AkzoNobel. You can argue that it has worked out better for the UK in terms of real high-value business."
"We are a better home because a company strapped for cash cannot invest. ICI staff know they are now part of the undisputed leader in their industry. They have a future," he said.
Dr Wijers said AkzoNobel paid "a stiff price" for ICI but did so in cash – not debt – helping it to weather the global industrial collapse of 2008-2009. Dr Wijers was reproached at the time for underestimating the severity of the US and Club Med housing busts, but he was not alone in that.
"I can still tell my shareholders that we will create positive value [EVA] in the fourth year of the acquisition, which is amazing," he said. The group's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation margin was 14.8pc in the third quarter, down from 15.4pc a year ago on rising raw material costs.
There will be no more adventures along the lines of ICI. AkzoNobel is aiming to lift its turnover from €14bn (￡11.8bn) to €20bn within five years through organic growth, doubling sales to €3bn in China – by then its biggest market. It hopes to quadruple growth in India, though from a lower base.
Analysts suspect that such growth can be achieved only by takeovers in areas of the world that are suspiciously fashionable, and that Dr Wijers will pay too much to meet a trophy headline. Fear that he may pay too much is perhaps why the share price has languished at €42, a third of its 2007 highs. He is determined to prove them wrong.
The company has just opened a chelates and ethylene oxide plant in Ningbo for €275m, the largest single investment in AkzoNobel's history. It is entirely run by Chinese managers, and will supply the regional market. "This is the world's most advanced technology. We haven't held anything back," he said.
By the middle of the decade, AkzoNobel will no longer be a European company. It will metamorphose into an Asian company – even if still operating under Dutch law from corporate offices in Amsterdam.
This strategy has its own risks as emerging Asia grapples with rising inflation, and perhaps the first hints of stagflation. Yet what seems clear is that the West will be nursing its wounds for a long time after letting rip on debt.
"Deleveraging hurts," said Dr Wijers.
