Both organic and metallic coatings are used to provide protection against corrosion of metallic substrates. These metallic substrates, mostly carbon steel, will corrode n the absence of the coating, resulting in the reduction of the service life of the steel part or component. The total annual cost for organic and metallic protective coatings is $108.6 billion.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Census, the total amount of organic coating material sold in the United States in 1997 was 5.56 billion liters (1.47 billion gallons), at a value or $16.56 billion. The total sales can be broken down into architectural coatings, product OEM coatings, special purpose coatings, and miscellaneous paint products. A portion of each of these was classified as corrosion coatings at a total estimate of $6.7 billion. It is important to note that raw material cost is only a portion of a total coating application project, ranging from 4 to 20 percent of the total cost of application. When applying these percentages to the raw materials cost, the total annual cost of coating application ranges from $33.5 billion to $167.5 billion (an average of $100.5 billion).

The most widely used metallic coating for corrosion protection is galvanizing, which involves the application of metallic zinc to carbon steel for corrosion control purposes. Hot dip galvanizing is the most common process, and as the name implies, it consists of dipping the steel member into a bath of molten zinc. Information released by the U.S. Commerce Department in 1998 stated that about 8.6 millio metric tons of hot dip galvanized steel and 2.8 million metric tons of electrolytic galvanized steel were produced in 1997. The total market for metallizing and galvanizing in the United States is estimated at $1.4 billion. This figure is the total material cost of the metal coating and cost of processing, and does not include the cost of the carbon steel member being galvanized/metallized.