Plastic markets, product and material

The usually reported second largest market for plastics is building and construction consuming about 20 wt%. However, the amount of plastics is only about 5% of all materials consumed in building and construction so that a large growth area exists for plastics when the price is right since then-properties provide durability, performances, insulation, cosmetics, etc. (Fig. 4-5). Different plastics are used that include PVCs, PEs, PMMA, PSs, phenolics, TS polyesters, and many more. Examples of products are listed in Table 4-1. 

Market research is an important and effective link in the chain of events that starts with an idea and leads to an investment in research and development. Market research is required to ferret out market needs and to help describe the characteristics of the product that could fill this need. Many new plastics are expected to replace nonplastic materials in specific applications, and part of the input must include the developing of a suitable new fabricating process. Anyone involved in these activities knows that it is an oversimplification to expect market research people to go out into the market place and ask potential users what their future needs are going to be. A large majority just do not know, particularly when yours program requires an estimate of the profitability of a project before it is initiated. This requires not only an understanding of a need but also an appreciation of future pricing, volume, and costs. 

This paper will cover the problems plastics producers encounter when they market their products and attempt to obtain a satisfactory return on the stockholders investment. Explaining the former is almost as difficult as accomplishing the latter. I would like to approach the problem first from the viewpoint of the material supplier and the end user. I ll then try to show how buyer and seller get together with several case histories illustrating these points. 

It has been estimated that the consumption of rubber in ebonite products increased on an average of about 6% a year until 1951 when different plastics appeared in the market as competitive materials [6]. But because of the superiority of ebonites in acid and chlorine duties, it still maintains its place in the process industries as a material of construction as evidenced by its increased use in anticorrosive lining of chemical process vessels and tanks for the process industries and rolls for steel and textile and paper and pulp industries. 

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