U.S. EPA issued an FOV to Republic Powdered Metals on March 29, 2004 and an FOV to Euclid and Rust-Oleum on December 22, 2004 for violations of the Architectural Coatings Standards at 40 C.F.R. Part 59, Subpart D. Specifically, Republic failed to provide a statement of its recommendation on thinning and the VOC content on all its containers of architectural coatings. Euclid and Rust-Oleum, as a single manufacturer, exceeded the VOC content limits of some of their architectural coatings without paying exceedance fees.
Euclid, Rust-Oleum, and Republic are subsidiaries of RPM International, Inc. According to the Architectural Coatings Standards, a manufacturer is defined as a person that produces, packages, or repackages architectural coatings for sale or distribution in the United States. ... [D]ivisions of a company, subsidiaries, and parent companies are considered to be a single manufacturer. Euclid, Rust-Oleum, and Republic produce architectural coatings and therefore, since they are all subsidiaries of the same company, together are a single manufacturer of architectural coatings.
From September 1999 to January 2004, Euclid and Rust-Oleum produced architectural coatings that exceeded the applicable VOC content limits. When an architecural coatings manufacturer produces coatings with VOC contents that exceed the applicable VOC content limits, the manufacturer may claim a limited quantity of these coatings to be exempt from the VOC content limits and exceedanc