All around the globe, energy efficiency is becoming more and more important in buildings, vehicles, and electric devices, which will lead to an increasing use of PUR as insulating material. Ceresana forecasts global demand for PUR to rise by, on average, 4.5% per year. This increase of demand is mainly supported by innovations that continuously open up new application areas for PUR. Asia-Pacific already is the prime market for PUR, accounting for about 44% of global demand, followed by North America and Western Europe. Ceresana forecasts the focus of PUR demand to continue to shift towards Asia-Pacific, at the expense of saturated industrialized markets in Western Europe and North America. Demand in emerging countries, on the other hand, is profiting from a continuous increase of wealth. The by far most important growth motor on the international market is China.
In order to satisfy the rising demand for PUR, production capacities have to be expanded considerably - in Asia-Pacific in particular. In total, global isocyanate capacity, currently amounting to 8.8 mln tons, is scheduled to increase by more than 3 mln tons until 2020. Over 81% of these new capacities will be created in Asia-Pacific. As the study explains in detail, especially the development of new PUR-based materials for an increasing number of applications is necessitating a significant increase of production capacity.
A major consumer of PUR is the Construction industry, as a range of state-funded programs target at improving energy efficiency. All around the world, PUR-based products are used in the construction of new residential buildings and in the refurbishment of older structures. Even on saturated markets, this can provide growth impulses. The versatility of PUR opens up an increasing number of possible uses in the Transportation industry as well. Bearing in mind their customers' preferences, manufacturers of automobiles are developing vehicles that are more and more fuel and energy efficient. Utilizing PUR leads to a reduction of gross weight and contributes significantly to an improved life-cycle assessment. Individual application areas for PUR are projected to develop at highly divergent growth rates during the upcoming eight years. Experts at Ceresana forecast the highest growth rates of 5.7% p.a. for applications such as cooling and refrigerating units, shoes and textiles as well as sports and leisure goods, closely followed by the Construction industry. As a result, the Construction sector will become the most important sales market for PUR, driven by measures to increase energy efficiency. Less dynamic growth rates of, on average, 3.3% p.a. each are anticipated for the segments Furniture / Bedding and Industrial goods.