market analysis | Europe Site rationalisation and/or volume shift is taking
place across almost all industry sectors in Europe. Both trends are most apparent in sectors where there is a high level of moulder specialisation and are less visible in the custom moulding sector. However, the versatility of the moulding process, together with innovative developments by moulders and polymer suppliers, continues to create new and enhanced opportunities for plastic injection moulded products across many market sectors and particularly in applications where metal replacement, part integration, light weighting, enhanced design or decoration are valued.
Above: Many European moulders have moved production eastwards to follow custom- ers such as Fiat, which has production in Poland,
Hungary and Serbia (pictured) as well as Italy
dependent on the OEMs they serve. However, profi tabil- ity can often be better for those moulders with a diverse customer base than for those serving a specifi c end use segment such as automotive or packaging. All companies in the European injection moulding
sector, however, have faced considerable challenges in recent years. The global economic crisis was perhaps the single biggest but injection moulders also faced increasing globalisation of customers and competitors, coupled with changing demands and technologies within the market sectors that are served.
Rationalisation continues As previously mentioned, the global recession acceler- ated a process of rationalisation in the European injection moulding industry that had been underway for several years, most notably in Western Europe. Demand for injection moulding in Europe as a whole – in terms of virgin polymer throughput - reached a low in 2009 and while it has since been recovering the industry has continued to lose sites. AMI’s unique database of injection moulding sites has tracked this trend, with more than 2,500 known European moulding sites removed since 2007. More than 2,000 of these sites were lost from Western Europe, where the number of moulding sites is forecast to continue to decline. Factors behind this include consolidation of activities within larger groups,
retirement of private owners, and companies relocating to lower cost regions or shifting their focus from mould- ing to other activities.
While the number of moulding sites declines in
Western Europe, in Central and Eastern Europe site closures have been more than offset by new entrants. This region continues to attract a high level of new investment and AMI expects the number of moulding sites to grow, although not at a rate suffi cient to fully compensate for the losses in Western Europe.
12 INJECTION WORLD | January/February 2015
Moulders that are able to exploit innovative develop- ments in the markets they serve are the most likely to prosper in the European marketplace. Those operating in sectors which have limited local growth opportuni- ties, low specialisation and commodity pricing are likely to suffer as this business continues to move outside of the region.
Shifting markets
Within Europe, the shift of moulding volume from Western to Central and Eastern European countries has largely been a result of injection moulders following the investments made by their customers, particularly automotive and electrical appliance manufacturers looking to reduce their operation costs. However, the economic development of these regions has also created a larger European consumer market and this has benefi ted the entire moulding sector.
The European injection moulding sector has also been impacted by competitive pressures from manufac- turers in overseas regions, particularly China and South East Asia, and from groups merging and restructuring
Injection moulding polymer demand by country 2014 © Applied Market Information Ltd, 2015
www.injectionworld.com
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72