As the polyolefin market has undergone a major transformation over the last few years due to several key factors, the comonomer market has been reshaped.
Metallocene and other advanced catalysts have created new products, new grades, new intercompetition in polymer markets, and new cost structures. Octene-based LLDPE, plastomers and elastomers have been especially successful, luring a new octene supplier, Sasol, into the comonomer market.
Acquisitions, mergers, collaborative agreements, and the settling of important patent disputes have created a new market structure for polyethylene. Polyolefin producers are forming joint ventures and strategic alliances that strengthen their technical and marketing positions, as well as enhancing their production capabilities, thus creating formidable new competition and in some cases, new comonomer supplier/customer relationships.
Polyolefin production capacity is rapidly increasing in South America, the Middle East and Asia (in spite of its recent economic crisis), as well as in the large, developed markets of North America and Europe, forever altering traditional trade patterns and creating new comonomer customers.
POLYOLEFIN COMONOMERS – WORLD MARKETS, 1995-2005 investigates these and other technical, competitive, and market developments and analyzes their impact on comonomer consumption and production.