PET was Latin America’s largest volume engineering polymer export in 2024. Latin America was a growth market for all of the polymers, with imports up from the prior year and the highest percentage gains for ABS, SAN, and PET.

Exports were almost exclusively to North America, with small volumes of ABS and polycarbonates shipped to Asia-Pacific.

Imports increased from most regional sources. Asia-Pacific supplied more than 70% of Latin America’s ABS and PET, and about half of its SAN and polycarbonates. North America provided 45% – 60% of its polycarbonates, polyacetals, and PMMA. Small volumes of all the polymers were also imported from Western Europe; and, from the Middle East, ABS, and PMMA.

This series of blogs quantifies imports and exports in 2024 of the major engineering polymers – ABS, SAN, Polyacetal, PC, PMMA, and PET – allowing comparisons across the polymers for the geographic regions of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, North America, Latin America, Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

From International Trader Publications’ continuously updated World Trade Analyses of all grades of engineering polymers.