My journey with Quantum started back in 2018 in Italy of all places.

I was attending a conference with a group of international paint companies and saw a presentation about a new kind of paint dispenser that was going to disrupt the industry.

Imagine, they said, what our new technology could allow us to do – we could introduce a completely new way to make paint using a one base system vs the conventional four bases, and produce the most exact colours by using increments of pigment 10 times smaller than traditional systems.

I, like many of the international experts in the room, was skeptical at first. The theory sounded great, but it seemed that no one in the world had found a way to actually turn it into a reality. But I was so intrigued by what could be possible if this new system could be made to work I decided to take it on.

Yes, it was audacious to think that a relatively small independent paint company from the Caribbean could be the ones to change the global industry, and especially to do so using much of our own local R&D expertise – not to mention in the middle of the pandemic – but we were committed and would not back down.

What followed was thousands of hours of testing, research, conference calls with partners all around the world – sometimes at night because of the different time zones – and hundreds of formula iterations before we finally arrived at something that worked. And it didn’t just work – it was better than anything we had made before, and worthy of an international patent!

This means that any paint using our new Quantum technology will better match the colour chip and can require less coats to hide. The new system, which uses customized state of the art dispensing machines, is also much better at repeating colours and limiting can-to-can inconsistencies, is way less likely to produce mistints, but is best in class at producing colours that are cleaner/brighter than ever before.

We also took the opportunity when launching Quantum to adjust the types of pigments we use, adding some super-high performance concentrated pigments to further improve our already best by test fade resistance.

But the new Quantum system is not just about offering superior performance in the can. By having a single base system, we are able to scale up our production and make the paint much faster and without needing the same wide range of raw materials to be available. This means less out of stocks and faster turnaround for large projects.

The technology also helps our retailers, who can now offer an even broader range of colours from stocking less than half the traditional level of inventory. This means faster turns and less out of stocks for our dealers, and also makes it more cost effective and feasible for us to set up new dealers in new markets.

I am proud to have been part of an International cross functional team that developed this one-of-a-kind technology with the Harris Paints team, and proud that such a technology was pioneered right here in Barbados.

More than that, however, is that I am proud of how this paint performs.

We didn’t just get the formula to work and rush it to market.

We have had our Quantum i12™ paints tested by independent international labs to prove just how good it was, based on the performance conditions of the Caribbean. We also have brushed and rolled out gallons of different colours of the new paint with our staff and key contractors to make sure each colour performs as expected.

Now, after 50 years of history, we can truly offer a paint that provides the best colour accuracy, the best colour clarity, the best fade resistance, the best coverage and the best overall performance in the Region – and I can even see this new paint fueling our growth beyond the Caribbean – because the proof is in the can! (Charles Kirton, Vice President Technical Services and Innovation)