Eastern Europe’s trade in commodity polymers in 2024 was characterized by sizable exports of HDPE and polypropylene homopolymer (PP) and the largest volume imports of any region with the exception of Asia-Pacific (and Latin America, for polyethylene). This series of blogs quantifies imports and exports in 2024 of the major commodity polymers – LDPE, linear/ethylene-alpha-olefin copolymers (LL/EAOC), HDPE, EVA, PP, propylene copolymers (PRC), polystyrene, and PVC – allowing comparisons across the polymers for the geographic regions of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Africa, North America, Latin America, Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

Eastern Europe, which includes eleven EU members, exported roughly 70% of its total HDPE shipments and 60% of its polypropylene to Western Europe (all EU). Eastern Europe’s exports to Asia-Pacific accounted for roughly an additional 30% of both HDPE and PP.
Eastern Europe imported the highest volume of any world region of PRC, both grades of polystyrene, and PVC. Western Europe was the region’s leading supplier, with large volumes of polyethylene also imported from North America, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, and polypropylene from the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. PVC imports from the US and Egypt dropped with the imposition by the EU of anti-dumping duties.
From International Trader Publications’ continuously updated World Trade Analyses of all grades of commodity polymers.