MOSCOW (MRC) -- The global automotive plastic consumption is anticipated to grow from 7.1 mln tons in 2012 to 11.3 mln tons by 2018 at an expected CAGR of 8% from 2013 to 2018, reported Plastemart with reference to as per RnRMarketResearch.
The high growth rate of the industry is attributable to increasing passenger car production and initiatives by automobile manufacturers towards light-weighting of cars. The global market is mainly driven by passenger car production and increasing utilization of automotive plastics in vehicle designs. The report covers global consumption of seven major types of automotive plastics used in passenger cars such as polypropylene (PP), polyurethanes (PU), polycarbonates (PC), high density polyethylene (HDPE), polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), and composites.
The use of plastics in interior, exterior, and under bonnet components of automobiles help in weight reduction, improve aesthetics, vibration and noise control, and cabin insulation. The properties of plastics such as easy moldability, recyclability, scratch resistance, high volume to weight resistance, thermal stability, impact strength, and resistance to abrasion make them suitable for use in automobiles. Among all the automotive plastics, PP leads consumption by 37% followed by PU (17.3%), ABS (12.3%), composites (11.5%), HDPE (10.8%), PC (6.8%), and PMMA (4.4%) due to their easy forming properties and their availability at cheaper price than other materials.
As of 2012, Asia-Pacific leads consumption by capturing 50.5% of market followed by Europe (28%), North America (11.3%), and rest of the world (10.1%). Major suppliers/producers include Dow Chemical Company (U.S.), Bayer MaterialScience (Germany), Momentive Performance Materials (U.S.), Akzonobel (Netherlands), and Evonik (Germany).
The leading consumers include major automobile manufacturers such as Toyota Motor Corp., Hyundai Motor Company, Mitsubishi Motors Corp., General Motors, Honda Motor Co. Ltd, and Peugeot SA. The main drivers of automotive plastics utilization are their potential for mass reduction of automobile and fuel consumption reduction potential by reducing the weight of the vehicle. The factors restraining the growth of market are high material cost and huge investment in material research activities by companies. The opportunities are cited in the development of new materials such as reinforced composites and PMMA.
The global passenger car production is dominated by Asia-Pacific region followed by Europe, North America, and rest of the world.
As MRC wrote earlier, BASF opens new center in Thailand for Asian growing automotive market. BASF has set up a new Coatings Technical Competence Center ASEAN in Bangkok, Thailand. This new facility supports technical and laboratory activities mainly in motorcycle coatings including technology transfer, product development, performance testing, color design and development, and houses a sales and marketing team as well as a technical service team of more than 20 professionals, all catering to motorcycle manufacturers in the ASEAN region.
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