Ceepackaging

Analysis

Global demand for plastics processing machinery forecast to grow to USD25bn

These and other trends are presented in World Plastics Processing Machinery, a
new study from The Freedonia Group, Inc., a Cleveland-based industry research firm.
Product sales in developing parts of Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East
and Latin America will outpace demand in the developed countries of the US,
Western Europe and Japan through 2012. Advances will be stimulated by healthy
economic growth, ongoing industrialization efforts and higher per capita income in these
developing areas. China will post the largest gains of any national market, with plastics
processing equipment demand in the country rising by over $1.6 billion from 2007 to
2012, when China will account for close to one-fourth of the global market. Two of the
other three BRIC nations — India and Russia — will also record strong advances, while
machinery sales growth in Brazil will be more subdued, due in part to the double-digit
annual increases in demand that have been registered in recent years. Gains are
expected to be healthy as well in lower-volume markets such as the Czech Republic,
Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Vietnam.
Plastics processing equipment demand in developed parts of the world will
expand as well, although growth will be much less robust than in developing
countries. Product sales will be driven by generally favorable economic conditions and
further increases in plastics processing activity in developed areas, bolstering demand
for plastics processing machinery as fixed investment activity climbs.
Extrusion equipment will post the strongest gains of any major product type
through 2012, benefitting from growth in global construction spending, which will fuel
demand for extruded goods like pipe and siding, as well as by further advances in
extrusion technology, resulting in increased sales of higher priced, more productive
machinery. Demand for reaction injection molding, rotomolding, and rapid prototyping
and manufacturing machinery, which does not require the use of molds and can replace
injection molding in some low-volume applications, will also grow rapidly. However,
injection molding equipment will continue to account for almost two-fifths of the 2012
plastics processing machinery market total, benefitting from the greater accuracy,
energy efficiency, flexibility and output of newer generations of equipment.