MEA | Q1 2026 Best Paints & Coatings Brand 2025 – East Africa Inviting its customers to add a splash of colour to their worlds, Kansai Plascon Uganda offers a range of quality solutions to Africa’s coatings market, specifically decorative, professional, and automative products for use across retail and industrial settings alike. With more than 130 years of experience to its name, the brand is today the largest and most trusted paint manufacturing company in Uganda, serving tens of thousands of customers every year. Below, we take a closer look at a brand that now has its sights set on becoming the number one coatings company in Africa. A subsidiary of Kansai Plascon Proprietary Ltd., which is based in South Africa and is today Africa’s largest coatings company, as well as being a part of the Japanese giant Kansai Paint, itself one of the top coatings companies worldwide, Kansai Plascon Uganda has an esteemed heritage behind it. Officially launched in East Africa in 2016, the company consolidated its market presence by strategically acquiring local paint businesses, including Sadolin in August 2017. Today, the brand operates across Southern, East, and West Africa. In Uganda, it boasts a world-class manufacturing facility in Namanve, which has the capacity to make 200,000 litres of paint a day and encompasses a waste treatment plant and a team of around 600 permanent and contracted employees. It is from this location that it delivers its high-quality paint certified to international quality standards. A second and more specialist production plant on 2nd Street Industrial area that produces textured paint products and special colours which are equally pivotal across its full-service range. Taking a closer look at the products available from East Africa’s premier paints and coatings brand, its comprehensive range is designed to suit the requirements of any customer, whether they are decorating the interior of their home or want to paint their vehicle. Some of the best-selling items across the Plascon range include its Vinyl Silk and Anti-Mosquito paint for interior walls, Weather Guard for exterior walls, Super Gloss for everything from trims and windowsills to gutters, and nitrocellulose paint for vehicles. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to defining a range with more than 40 different product classes and a range of colours, with Kansai Plascon Uganda offering both budget and premium lines, as well as products for wood protection, paints for the roof and the floor, industrial paints, paints for road markings, aluminium paints, and even thinners and architectural finishes. Such expanse is one of the reasons why the company sold a staggering six million litres of its products last December alone, breaking a record. “From project work and home decoration to preservation of infrastructure and painting of vehicles, Plascon’s superior ranges of paint have become a mainstay in homes, showrooms, roads, and cityscapes all over the region.” Beyond its stellar product line-up, setting the company apart is Plascon’s 360 Partnership Pledge. This encompassing, fully tailored solution sees coatings specifications, application monitoring, and maintenance service coordination provided for property investment portfolios across the region. By being involved at every stage of a project, the team make sure the right coating system is chosen based on environment and condition. Final colour selection is also made easier through the provision of samples and renderings. More than simply being a valuable service in its own right, this provision reflects Kansai Plascon’s drive to solidify itself as the leading paint and coatings company in Africa, and with it already operating in 22 countries across the continent, it is clear the brand is steadfast in achieving this goal, one can of paint at a time. Of course, this is far from an easy task and with the company facing competitors from across the continent, it recognises the importance of empowering its staff, refining its products, and bolstering its reputation. Supporting Kansai Plascon Uganda as it cements this market position is the strong commitment it has to research and development, ensuring that its reputation for innovation – something Plascon has been building for well over a century – continues to be the driving factor behind its success. Its R&D capabilities are strengthened by the company working with its group partners in both Japan and South Africa, where new products and product formulations are developed, tested, and improved in a process indicative of Kansai Plascon’s rigour. The scale of this operation is considerable, with Kansai Paint’s R&D headquarters in Japan spanning five different research institutes and one research testing centre. This impressive scope means that approximately a third of all of its Japan-based employees are involved in research and development activities in some capacity across basic research, colour design, and application or coating development. Other influences from its network aiding this process only serve to strengthen its capabilities in fulfilling the needs of customers. As expected, this R&D is underpinned by the rigorous quality control that follows, with these being monitoring according to the universal standards of ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015, and ISO 45001:2018. An equal emphasis is placed on ensuring that all of these products also exceed the local health and safety standards in Uganda, and all of the other countries where Kansai Plascon has specific divisions. The aim here is to continue leading the charge across the areas of environmental sustainability and industry leadership. An extension of this aim is the brand’s set of core values, with this comprising integrity, customer focus, accountability, respect, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Besides being the foundation of the trust it nurtures for its stakeholders, these values also highlight a commitment to its customers, staff, and local communities. Regarding this final area in particular, Kansai Plascon Uganda carries out a range of community projects, including partnering with Uganda Cup where it sponsors both the tournament and Vipers FC, Badminton Uganda, Uganda Tennis Association, Mongers Rugby Club, and more local clubs. However, this pales in comparison to some of its more recent drives, the highlight of which has seen it support life-saving heart surgeries for 100 children in India. Alongside this, the nature of the brand means that it donates a lot of paint to worthy causes across the country, and these past few months have seen the team donate to causes such as Noah’s Ark Home, a children’s home that cares for more than 100 children with disabilities, Jinja Police Station which was in need of a refresh, Cancer Palliative Care Centre,
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