Commodity films like PE, PP, PVC and to some extent PET are large in market size but are growing at relatively modest levels particularly in the developed regions such as North America, Europe and Japan. However, they are growing healthily in Asia. High performance films like PET, Polyamide, higher grades of polyolefins, PC, fluoropoplymers, cyclic olefin copolymers & polyamides have shown to grow quite well in the developed economies. There was a tilt toward higher-value, higher cost high-performance materials, a trend that will accelerate in the next five years. This is partly by design and partly a result of market forces as per a report by BCC Research. Major players, such as DuPont, made corporate decisions to sacrifice markets, particularly in polyesters that had become commoditized, in favor of market development in areas with greater potention, such as solar cells and structural glass laminates.
The consumption rate for high performance films in USA was 12.8 billion pounds in 2005 and reached almost 14 billion pounds in 2006. Growing at an average annual growth rate (AAGR) of 2.9%, national consumption should cross 16 billion pounds by 2011. Correspondingly, most high-performance resins had a very significant increase in value in the same time frame, but only a minor increase in average price, from US$2.77 to US$2.98. Part of the reason was the market devastation wreaked on much of the polyester-based film market due to the dramatic swing to digital formats.
High-performance plastic films have become an important niche market in that they are specialty products at premium prices as per a study by Business Communications . Consumption is driven by end-use application. Although volumes of high-performance plastic films are relatively low compared to commodity films, the value of this market is disproportionately high, especially with most prices in excess of US$2/lb and many others over US$5/lb and even higher.
Performance film manufacture differs from most other segments of the U.S. polymer industry in that film fabrication is most often vertically integrated with resin production. Most other plastic products are produced by converters and molders, or by end users themselves, from bulk resin purchased from the large chemical and petrochemical companies that manufacture the bulk resin.
Large scale manufacture of plastic films is fairly capital-intensive although many companies that do not manufacture resins are significant film converters. There are, however, several large commodity polyolefin film converters who manufacture bulk resins. As per the report by B usiness Communications :
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The North American market for high-performance films is estimated to be 1.3 billion pounds in 2003 and is expected to rise at an average annual growth rate (AAGR) of 3.1% to 1.5 billion pounds in 2008.
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Based on volume, polyesters, nylons, and polyolefin-based high-performance films account for almost 95% of the total
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Lower volume, higher-priced films become account for about 26% of the value, but only 5% based of the volume.
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In regard to applications, packaging (mostly foods), photographic/ reprographic, and magnetic media make up about 62% of total film volume.
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Polyesters make up some 70% of the volume, but this percentage is slipping slightly. |
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