Key figures for China’s plastics economy quantified
23 November 2006 – US consultancy PrimaryImpact has subjected China’s plastics economy to a detailed examination and quantified several key indicators for the industry’s economy. The analysis shows that the country had net imports of $2.2bn of machinery and $613m of moulds and dies last year.
Net imports of plastic resins amounted to nearly 17m tonnes, the firm says in its 50 page report. Overall, the country produced more than 21.3m tonnes of polymers itself, it notes, quoting figures from the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. The indigenous manufacture was led by PVC at 6.5m tonnes with polyethylene at 5.3m tonnes and polypropylene at 5.2m tonnes.
Total imports of plastics machinery in 2005 amounted to $3.5bn with exports totalling $1.3bn while local manufacture totalled $2.2bn having posted a 14% growth over the previous year.
However, on the export side, PrimaryImpact estimates that China had a surplus of $9.8bn of finished goods from an industry which contributes 4.5% of the country’s overall GDP.
PrimaryImpact prepared the study for US publication Plastics News which released it at a recent seminar on China in Chicago. The overall report, available free, is supplemented by four additional subscription studies on masterbatch, compounding, injection moulding and extrusion.
“These studies will detail the remarkable growth of the China plastics market, the changes resulting from expansion and new trends driving each of these segments,” says Anthony Napoletano, managing director of the consultancy.
