Preliminary overview of vinyls trade in 2011: Latin America and Africa were high growth import markets for PVC; North America’s PVC exports increased for the sixth straight year; EDC global trade slowed; VCM trade expanded slightly.

Global trade volume in 2011, an indicator of global demand, was: 11.5 M tons of PVC, up 1%; 2.3 M tons EDC, down 6%; and, 3.6 M tons of VCM, up 2%.

A few trends visible for each product are highlighted below.

• PVC – North America’s exports increased 9% in 2011, on substantially higher shipments to Latin America and the Middle East and moderate gains to Eastern Europe and Africa. Exports to Asia-Pacific fell slightly.

Africa was a high growth market, imports 15%. Supplies from North America increased and much higher volumes were imported from Asia-Pacific versus the prior year.

Latin America’s imports rose 23%, mainly on polymer from North America but also noting increased volumes from Asia-Pacific.

Imports into Eastern Europe, the world’s largest market, rose 6%, higher volumes from Western Europe and North America offsetting a decline from Asia-Pacific.

• EDC – Imports into Asia-Pacific were off 8% in 2011, a small increase in supplies from North America offset by lower volumes from other regions.
• VCM – Imports into Asia-Pacific jumped 64% in 2011 and volumes into Latin America rose 22%. Most of this was supplied by North America although also noting smaller volume imports from the Middle East into Asia-Pacific.

[important]Final figures will be published March 26th in ITP’s PVC and EDC/VCM World Trade Annual Reviews. A prospectus is available at our web site.[/important]

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