United Paint & Coatings Inc., of Spokane, plans to leave paint in the past, and count, instead, on specialized coatings to carry the company into the next millennium.


Within the next five yearsas the company continues to produce its current coating products and develop new onesit expects to boost its annual sales by about 10 percent a year, make exports a bigger part of its business, and pursue additional joint ventures or licensing agreements with companies overseas.


In the last 10 years, our business really has changed, says Terry Cossette, United Paints executive vice president. Luckily, as the paint side of our business has continued to drop, we have been able to increase the coatings side of our business.


United Paint, which began making paint here in 1921, began moving more toward the development and production of specialized coatings rather than paint about the time paint manufacturers nationwide began consolidating.


These days, you have to be making $100 million in gross revenue to survive as a paint manufacturer, Cossette says.


The quiet company, which 10 years ago emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, currently employs 103 people, 88 of whom work in the Spokane area, and expects to bring in sales of about $20 million this fiscal year, which ends April 30, Cossette says.


United Paint produces five main coatings. They include Roof Mate, a liquid roofing system thats applied mostly to buildings; Diathon, a foam roofing system; Canyon Tones, a colored sealer for concrete structures such as bridges and freeway overpasses; Uni-Tex, an insulating stucco; and Elastuff, a polyurethane, abrasion-resistant coating for use in waste-water tanks and on dam trash gates.


Another product the company has developed and manufactures is called StreetPrint, Cossette says. The paving product is marketed and sold through a Canadian firm, called Integrated Paving Concepts Inc. StreetPrint, involves imprinting asphalt with templates that emulate the shape of brick pavers, cobblestone, or terracotta tiles. The asphalt then is sprayed with a cement-modified acrylic resin coatingdeveloped and produced by United Paintthat is colored to look like the various materials depicted in the stamped asphalt.


Those coatings are produced at United Paints 90,000-square-foot Greenacres headquarters building and manufacturing plant, at 19011 E. Cataldo. That facility is expected to be free of solvents by 2005, Cossette says. He says the company, which began reducing its use of solvents in 1982, plans to convert the area of its Spokane plant where solvent-based products had been made into an area for acrylic-based products.


Meanwhile, United Paint also produces Roof Mate and Diathon at its 15,000-square-foot plant in Tempe, Ariz.


In addition to its manufacturing plants, the company operates a sales office in Indianapolis, and three retail paint stores. Those stores are located at 1130 E. Sprague in Spokane, 1590 E. Seltice Way in Post Falls, and 422 W. Appleway in Coeur dAlene.


Earlier this year, United Paint closed a fourth store it had operated in the Spokane Valley, at 14109 E. Sprague, and replaced it with a factory outlet at its headquarters building. The factory outlet occupies about 3,500 square feet of space there, he says.


Cossette says the Post Falls store likely will be the next store to close as United Paint moves away from retail paint sales.


There arent any immediate plans, but that store easily could be consolidated into either our Coeur dAlene store or the factory outlet here, he says.


Currently, paint makes up about 90 percent of the inventory in those stores. Eventually, though, Cossette expects the stores mostly to sell United Paints main coating products to contractors for small projects and handle only a few specialty paint items.


Our plant will take care of supplying the large projects, but for smaller jobs, like at strip malls, contractors still need to use modern ways of doing roofing and waterproofing, and its retail stores will be able to supply those needs, Cossette says.


Our real future is going to be in large construction projects, though, he says.


The companys largest project last year involved supplying Roof Mate to coat the 2 million square feet of roof that covers Warner Bros. studios in Los Angeles.


In addition to manufacturing and supplying coatings, United Paints employees provide technical support to contractors, Cossette says. For instance, earlier this year the Spokane company provided technical support for the application of its Roof Mate product during the renovation of the historic Marin County Courthouse in San Rafael, Calif., he says.


Just last month, United Paint landed an about $1 million contract to supply Roof Mate to the U.S. Army and Korean Army for construction projects in Korea, Cossette says.


Contracts like that one can help United Paint beef up its international sales, which are expected to account for about 20 percent of the companys overall sales this fiscal year, Cossette says. He says he would like to see that percentage grow to at least 30 percent within the next five years.


Cossette asserts that United Paints Roof Mate product also is being used by the largest roofing contractor in Japan. United Paint has licensed technology to companies in Thailand and the Middle East, allowing those countries to produce Elastuff. The company also has established a licensing agreement with a company in Australia, which produces both Canyon Tones and Roof Mate. In those situations, United Paint is paid a royalty on the coatings that those companies sell.


In addition to establishing those licenses, United Paint has formed joint ventures with companies in Poland, Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, and Englandall of which produce United Paints main coating products, with the exception of Diathon.


Cossette says United Paint plans to continue pursuing license agreements or joint ventures. He adds that it also will continue to develop additional coatings that eventually could be produced by its own plants or plants abroad.