Indian Plastics Institute (IPI) organized a two day conference on Styrenics at Mumbai recently. This was probably the first time that a conference devoted entirely to Styrenics was held in the Asian region.

Styrenics products, although quite old, have not kept pace with Polyolefins as well as Vinyls due to the inherent higher costs of feedstocks. In fact, Styrenics constituted only 21 million tons of the total global plastics consumption of 165 million tons in 2004. Indian Styrenic consumption was less than 300KT in 2003 and lagged behind when compared to Polyolefins and Vinyls.

This conference brought about the confirmation of the news that Reliance Industries is setting up a 550KT capacity Styrene Monomer plant at Jamnagar using the Ethyl Benzene process of ABB Lummus/UOP, likely to be commissioned by the end of 2006.

Highlights of the conference:

		Alpha Methyl Styrene dimer was shown to produce narrower molecular weight distribution in Polystyrene compared to the other chain terminating agents.
		Mounting is simple for different moulds
		Reduced clamping forces
		Subsequent assembly is eliminated

The major usage of Styrenics is in the fields of automobile (ABS), white goods (HIPS/ABS), electronics (PS/HIPS). Disposable rigid packaging is possibly the application that constitutes 40% of the global Styrenic consumption. However only 10% of Styrenics consumed in India finds usage in packaging. Another interesting application of foamed Polystyrene is in the area of construction where it provides excellent insulation. Expandable Polystyrene as well as extruded foams are used in this application with each providing some advantages compared to the other. Both routes are widely used.

While General Purpose Polystyrene and High Impact Polystyrene as well as ABS have a major share of 21 million tons consumption, other specialty products such as SBS/SIS/SEBS/SEPS as elastomeric polymers and ASA, MABS and blends of PC/ABS, PPO/PS also have a very interesting applications. These specialities are expected to have about 10-15% share of the total market of Styrenics.

With 3 large producers of Polystyrene and 2 producers of ABS, India is self-sufficient and can provide the current needs of the Indian industry. In fact, almost 100KT of Polystyrene is exported from India. This situation will continue for at least another 3-5 years. It is expected that with the local availability of Styrene monomer in 2007, the Indian market would show better growth.