North America exported sizable volumes of polycarbonates, polyacetals, ABS and PET film/fiber grade in 2024 and imported large volumes of bottle and film/fiber grade PET, and ABS.

Asia-Pacific was the largest export destination for ABS, polyacetals and PET film/fiber grade. Latin America received the most SAN and polycarbonate. The only decline in North America’s exports was on PC, 271,000 tons, down 14%. This mainly reflected lower volumes to China and other Asia-Pacific markets in the face of increased exports of PC out of China and Thailand. Anti-dumping duties imposed by China on imports of polyacetal from North America are likely to impact North American exports in 2025.

Asia-Pacific supplied 65%-94% of North America’s imports of all the polymers. Western Europe was a significant source of ABS and PC; Latin America for ABS and both grades of PET. Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East also provided large volumes of bottle grade PET.

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.