IISRP exec cautions against 'hysterical rush' to capacity

NAPLES, Italy (May 23)—The synthetic rubber industry needs to find a way to balance supply and demand equitably and avoid the "wildàhysterical rush to capacity increases" that plagued the plastics industry in the 1980s and early '90s, according to the outgoing president of the International Institute of Synthetic Rubber Producers. Speaking at the institute's annual meeting in Naples recently, Roberto Paiella, head of the elastomers and styrenics division at Polimeri Europa, said "The key for our business' future is not, and cannot be, in overcapacityà. I don't believe that we'll better serve the elastomers business community—and our customers first—following the same short-sighted approach the plastics world followed in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s," Paiella said.