The Tribune

Paint Fair, a Grand Bahama-based firm specialising in coatings since 1980, was recently presented with the ‘Protective Coatings Caribbean Leader in Growth’ award.

This is a sales award for leading the Caribbean region in sales growth among distributors of International Paint, an industry leader of high performance coatings.

Martin Criado, International Paint’s Latin America manager for marine and protective coatings, and Steve Vickers, regional manager for the protective coatings division, led a conference of Caribbean distributors in Tampa, Florida, where Paint Fair representatives were presented with the unexpected award.

“We were thrilled to receive the award for the greatest sales growth among distributors for International Paint in the Caribbean region, covering countries from Trinidad & Tobago, Puerto Rico and Jamaica to Surinam, Dominican Republic and the Bahamas,” said Lesley Davies-Baptista, Paint Fair’s general manager.

“We have been working very hard at building our industrial business by gaining the confidenceof our customers in such a technically specialised field.

“Our focus has been on not only meeting but exceeding industry standards in regards to training and technical experience, and competitively offering industry-leading products with proven track records throughout The Bahamas.”

While it has specialised in residential and commercial coatings since 1980, Paint Fair began a special training and development programme about eight years ago to sell and support the specialised, high-performance industrial coatings required for corrosion and fire protection by Grand Bahama’s industrial facilities and high-value infrastructure.

“Certainly, this market segment has long been an anchor for business in Grand Bahama, and it presented a unique opportunity for Paint Fair,” said Joan Davies, Paint Fair’s president,

“These are specialty products and services that, traditionally, were always imported by contractors and facilities because they were not available here. We understood, however, it wasn’t a matter of simply supplying the products. It was critical to develop our technical support capacity to not only provide the industrial coatings but to also provide on island, and throughoutthe Bahamas, the support and service that such a specialised market demands.”

Paint Fair now has a National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE) certified operations manager able to work with engineers, project managers and maintenance crews on solutions for corrosion and fire protection.

Eric Baptista said: “We have been able to combine our local, Bahamas-wide availability and support with a global leader in product innovation, dedicated technical support, specifications and performance.

“It is local access to global innovation and support – a combination that is ideal for our industrial customers, who want to maximise the lifetime of their critical assets without the product waste or downtime that often comes with importing the products or bringing in technical support whenever a site visit is needed.”