New developments to help better growth in Polyamides.

Polyamides, the largest engineering polymer group is in the midst of some exciting developments. The first consists of an increasing demand from China due to higher growth of it's automotive industry. Other applications, such as appliances, communication equipments, etc. will also increase the demand of Polyamides in China. In fact, experts believe that China's Polyamide consumption is expected to surpass that of North America and even Europe by the end of this decade. It is expected that the Polyamide component of Chinese cars will increase significantly, leading to an average growth of over 20% for Polyamides in China for this segment. The overall growth of Polyamides in China will at least be twice the average global growth of about 5-6%.

A shift is taking place in the automotive industry where the usage of Engineering polymers such as Polyamide or PC etc will be preferred over the commodity polymer like PP because of high mechanical properties at higher temperatures. An auto part like battery when changed to 42KV from the existing 12KV, would demand all the under hood plastic parts to withstand higher temperatures. Polyamide producers are concentrating on these new exciting applications.

Another application that is expected to grow well in the next decade, is the usage of Nylon films to improve barrier properties. China again is expected to play a very important role in this development because of packaging required by a very large population, living in the vastness of the country. Both BOPA (Bi Oriented Poly Amide) and coextruded film with Polyolefins is likely to grow well.

The technical developments in the compounding are likely to provide faster results. Some of them showing good promise are:

		Nano composites
		Alloys with PP or other Polyolefins

It is expected that some of the existing problems with the above products such as inferior impact strength of nano composites or significant reduction in the flexural modulus of the PP alloys will either be completely eliminated or at least will be resolved to some extent. Any improvement in these products will hasten the growth of Polyamide.

Polymer producers are developing newer processes with an intention of reducing manufacturing costs. They are also involved in improving the rheological properties by modification of structure. The impact of developments in manufacturing processes is expected only after a few years.

Most of the experts in the Polyamide industry are very optimistic that these developments will definitely help in achieving better growth over the next few years globally.

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