The rapid expansion of data analytics and machine learning has disrupted nearly every industry in just a few decades. The field of materials science and discovery has been near the forefront of the global trend towards digitisation [1]. Starting in drug discovery and catalyst design, numerous research groups have dedicated tremendous effort to applying data analytics and machine learning to chart a course beyond serendipitous discovery [1, 2]. This trend has more recently extended to formulation optimisation and performance prediction [3]. The coatings industry has fully embraced the move to advanced data analytics [4]. The reason behind this ...