The Powder Coatings Plant That Got the Money

In March 2024, AkzoNobel named four North American powder coatings sites and spent money on all of them.

Reading, Pennsylvania. Warsaw, Indiana. Nashville, Tennessee. Monterrey, Mexico. $30 million for new extruders, thermoplastics and bonding technology, announced as "designed to increase overall production capacity."

Thirty-one months later, three of those four are splitting up the fourth's order book.

"What was Nashville actually making, and who makes it now?"

On October 12 AkzoNobel confirmed to WKRN in Nashville that it will close the powder coatings plant there by the end of 2026, cutting 75 jobs. The volume goes to Reading, Warsaw and Monterrey. "The announcement applies only to the powder coatings manufacturing plant in Nashville," a spokesperson said, and the regional office across town, 117-plus people in sales, marketing, finance and support, stays.

What the statement does not contain is a product, a grade, or a tonne.

What 20 Culvert Street Actually Reports

The plant has an address, and the address has a federal paper trail.

EPA's Toxics Release Inventory carries one facility in Tennessee whose name contains "Akzo": 37210FRRCR20CUL, Akzo Nobel Inc, 20 Culvert Street, Nashville 37210. The same street number AkzoNobel's own North America supplier list files under business unit Powder Coatings, plant name "Nashville Plant."

Ninety-nine forms, 15 chemicals, 33 reporting years between 1987 and 2024 (chart above).

Three things fall out of that record immediately.

The first is bisphenol A, filed in 28 of those years, which is the epoxy side of the house and the oldest continuous thing on the site's file.

The second is the gap.

The facility's forms run unbroken from 1987 to 2018, and then there is nothing on file for 2019 through 2023. Thresholds move, and the record only shows what crossed them, so read the blank as unposted.

The third is the one that tells you what to requalify.