When Parth Moradia and Mihir Vasoya began considering entering the finishing industry in 2020, they thought they would open a new powder coating business to service manufacturers.
Parth Moradia, left, and Mihir Vasoya started Kroma Coatings Technology in 2023.However, the closer they examined the industry, the more convinced they were that it needed a powder coating supplier that focused on smaller to mid-size coating operations.
Soon, they found themselves taking formulation classes and learning the principles of different powder coatings. In January 2022, Moradia and Vasoya helped launch Kroma Coatings Technology, based in Columbus, Ohio.
The company offers various types of powder coatings, all formulated in its Ohio manufacturing plant, including polyester tri glycidyl isocyanurate (TGIC) and TGIC-free coatings, polyester super durable coatings, epoxy coats, and epoxy/polyester hybrid powder coating.
End User or a Formulator?
“We knew we wanted to be in the coatings space, either as an applicator or a supplier,” says Moradia, Sales Director at Kroma. The more we and our two partners began looking at it, we realized that there was a definite need in the powder coating supplier area.”
Moradia and Vasoya's partners are already in the manufacturing sector. Over the years, they have often run into trouble getting powder coating materials and supplies, leading them to start Kroma Coatings.
Moradia had been in the retail industry for many years before focusing on the coatings industry. He spent the last few years in the diamonds and precious gems market but knows from his retail days that customer service is key to any business’s success.
“I was skeptical at first because they were a new formulator, but after a few sprays, I knew this was very good material,” Myers says.
“We believe there is a void in the quick turnaround, low-volume side of powder coating supplies,” he says. “In doing our research by talking to many coaters, we saw a lack of customer support for low-volume customers. We believe that is something that we could fill and service those customers in a way that helps them.”
Glossy, Satin, and Matte Products
A mixer is used to crush and mix all the raw materials into a homogenous premix.Kroma Coatings Technology offers not only powder coatings but also powder coating paint—in glossy, satin, and matte products—in finishes such as smooth, textured, leatherette, hammerstone, antique, clear, structures, and metallics.
Jason Myers owns Myers Powder Coating in Saint Clairsville, Ohio, and says he has been steadily ordering more pounds of product from Kroma Coatings over the past six months.
“It gave us some great coverage on a lot of our projects,” says Myers. “Their products are very good compared to others we have used, and they are great people to work with.”
Myers Powder Coating has been in business since 2017, when Myers turned his part-time business into a full-time operation. He has been coating parts for more than 20 years and says the Kroma Coatings are some of the best he has used.
“I was skeptical at first because they were a new formulator, but after a few sprays, I knew this was very good material,” Myers says. “After the first few projects we coated with them, I started ordering bulk from them.”
In-House Formulations, Packaging, and Delivery
Vasoya is responsible for running the Kroma Coatings Technology production facility, where he oversees the formulations of the products, their packaging, and delivery to customers. He earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and is using it to manufacture the powder coat.
“For us, service and support is a big thing that we differentiate from other suppliers. We want to be able to offer the best pre-and post-sales support that we can. We spend a lot of time with each customer.”
“It is fairly easy to manufacture powder coatings,” Vasoya says. But you do need quality raw materials, which always results in high-quality coatings.
Kroma Coatings has installed an entire production line for manufacturing powder coating at their Columbus facility that consists of three main machines:
- A mixer is used to crush and mix all the raw materials into a homogenous premix.
- From there, it gets transferred into an extruder with a cooling belt attached. The extruder heats the premix to about 100°Celsius and has two screws in the barrel that does the mixing and breaking down of materials into chips.
- The final step is a grinding system that turns flakes into fine powder, which is shot into a sieve to deliver the right particle size for the powder coating.
Vasoya then oversees the powder coatings being boxed up and put on a pallet to ship.
Targeting Small to Medium Size Shops
Jason Myers of Myers Powder Coating says he has been steadily ordering more pounds of product from Kroma Coatings.Moradia says they are going after every segment of the powder coating market, from large-scale industrial projects or intricate design endeavors to the smaller shops that may do several batch jobs each day.
“Every supplier wants to do volume, and everybody's competing at that high volume level all the time,” he says. “We think we can come in on the medium volume side and still be able to carve out a space for us and not step on anybody's toes too much.”
In fact, Moradia says that when Kroma Coatings Technology first started contacting powder coating shops about their products in 2023, the shop owners and managers were surprised, as they didn’t realize that a new supplier was even on the market.
“There are simply not a lot of people starting powder coating manufacturing these days, if ever,” he says. The reception initially was good, with a lot of shops saying they would keep us in mind if something happened with their current supplier. But most shops are happy that someone new is coming into the market, causing disruptions and maybe even causing some of the big guys to change up what they've been doing.”
Over the past year, Kroma Coatings Technology has added more customers each month since they launched, and customers are enjoying what they are getting.
“They start out with a small order, but we are seeing them slowly order more and more product,” Moradia says. “For us, service and support is a big thing that we differentiate from other suppliers. We want to be able to offer the best pre-and post-sales support that we can. We spend a lot of time with each customer.”
