KONSTANZ, Germany—Ceresana, a research firm headquartered in Germany, reports that the global market for polyurethane will continue to grow in the foreseeable future.
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 $80 billion," said Oliver Kutsch, CEO of 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 toward 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 tons and says this will increase by more than 3 million ton by 2020.
More than 81 percent of new capacity will be created in Asia-Pacific. As the study explains, 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 class, which demands greater comfort, and from the building sector, for thermal insulation, says the report.
Besides PU, the study also contains separate analyses regarding methylene diphenyl diisocyanate and toluene diisocyanate.