The global market for polyurethane is will continue to grow in the foreseeable future, according to a new report from Ceresana Research.
Global demand will rise, "on average, 4.5 percent per year. Our research revealed that revenues generated on the global market for PU are likely to increase to more than US$80 billion," explains Oliver Kutsch, CEO of Konstanz, Germany-based Ceresana.
Asia-Pacific is the largest market, accounting for about 44 percent of global demand, followed by North America and Western Europe, says the report.
Ceresana forecasts the focus of PU demand to continue to shift towards Asia-Pacific, at the expense of saturated industrialized markets in Western Europe and North America. Demand in emerging countries, is profiting from a continuous increase of wealth.
Increasing demand, especially in the Asia-Pacific region means increasing capacity. Ceresana puts global capacity at 8.8 million metric tons, and says this will increase by more than 3 million metric tons by 2020.
Over 81 percent of new capacity will be created in Asia-Pacific. As the study explains in detail, especially the development of new PUR-based materials for an increasing number of applications is necessitating a significant increase of production capacity.
Markets are driven by larger middle classes, which demand greater comfort and from the building sector, for thermal insulation, says the report.
Besides PU, the study also contains separate analyses regarding the two preliminary products methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) and toluene diisocyanate (TDI).