A look at the Italian sector

Table 2:
* The total supply is taken from the total sales, i.e. production less variation in stocks of the suppliers. Real consumption has been defined by the processed plastic, i.e., total purchases less variation of stocks of transformers.

Inflation stood at + 2.5%, above the forecasts of the Government and the European average (+ 2.2%), while the household consumption remained stable.

Even the rate of investment was negative, mainly due to lower investments in machinery and transport, only partially compensated by the growth of the construction sector.

The consumption of Virgin plastics was the worst since 1993 (+ 1.4%), with a smaller even than the 2001 increase.

In terms of production and exports of plastics, stayed at the level of 2001, while imports increased.

• Polyethylene: LDPE/LLDPE demand grew by 1.4 per cent (compared with 3.6 per cent in 2001), with the LLDPE registering the best behavior. The application of fast creicmiento in the field of LDPE was the film for automatic packaging and container. The shrink film increased only slightly, while increased the shopping bags or films for agriculture and industry were to suffer a downward trend. The development in the field of the LLDPE was led again by the stretch film.
• In HDPE, demand rose moderately (+ 2.6%) in 2002, the hand of the market of tubes and, to a lesser extent, of the films.
• Polypropylene: this plastic in 2002 demand exceeded more than the average, although it was below the forecast due to the unfortunate behavior of fibers market. On the other hand, the extrusion sector both the BOPP films threw this material prominently.
• PVC: the PVC only recorded an increase in minor (+ 0.5% in 2002, with an increase in applications of rigid PVC thanks to the remarkable increase in exports of compounds.) PVC laminated, on the other hand, suffered a downward trend, largely due to the coating of cables and exports of compounds, where demand was very low.
• Polystyrenes: the PS strong showed a satisfactory increase, in line with expectations (+ 3%). The main thrust came given by extrusion, with disposable products and sheets expanded as major areas of growth. The demand for EPS was also satisfactory (+ 2.3%), with the construction and application of insulation as key drivers of the upward trend.

Responsible for the increase in the field of packaging and packaging is the automatic packaging (+ 5.7%), with the BOPP and other biorientadas films leading this development. Shrink and stretch films also behaved well, although the stock exchanges and other flexible products, not so much.

As for the rigid product, is only recorded a significant increase in films for thermoforming (+ 5.5%), while the behavior of the bottles was even worse than the sector as a whole.

The construction sector recorded an increase of 2.5 per cent, in line with the situation of this industry.

Demand for tubes had a good year in 2002, probably due to the slowdown in public works. PVC not moved, but if did it slightly upwards HDPE and the pp.

The isolates showed a satisfactory development, with plates of expanded PS and PU panels with rigid surfaces such as main actors. Profiles registered a growth of 0. Window profiles continued penalized by the contraction of external markets which addresses most of the sales.

The furniture is also an important scope, with about 5.5% of the total demand for plastics. The padded furniture (beds, sofas etc) are the main consumers of polyurethane foams, suffered the adverse conditions of the economy. Became it worse garden furniture manufacturers.

With regard to the consumption of Virgin plastics in automotive, the fall was 9-10%, more or less equal to the decrease in production of cars. And despite the growing presence of plastics in cars and lascada time increased exports of components of Italian suppliers. One of the reasons lies in the ever-increasing use of recycled plastics.

The household appliances sector increased slightly, unlike agriculture, where the high competition from other countries gave negative results in 2002, with a lower demand (- 1.5%). Also footwear is a consuming many plastics industry, which in 2002 obtained poor results

In regards to technology and production, extrusion, with half of the total of the applications, was the fastest growing area.

The sector of the films recorded moderate growth (+ 2.5%), while the sector of the plates and sheets closed the year with very positive figures (+ 5%), with the expanded sheets and PP, PET and BOPS termoconformables behaved very well.

Production of pieces only injected was slightly above the unsatisfactory result of 2001.

The blow molding, for its part, was affected by the advanced state of maturity of the industry of mineral water and refreshing drinks, and production is not increased.