Western Europe exported roughly 25% more ABS, SAN, Polyacetal and PET polymer in 2024 than in 2023. Exports of PC and PMMA grew 5%.

Imports of PET film/fiber grade jumped 24%; polycarbonates, 12%. Import trends for other polymers were mixed.

Over 60% of Western Europe’s engineering polymer exports went to Eastern Europe, the one exception being polyacetal, with 49% to Asia-Pacific and 40% to Eastern Europe.

Western Europe’s largest volume import was bottle-grade PET, 1.2 million tons, unchanged, followed by PET film/fiber grade, 375,000 tons, up 24%. Imports of both grades of PET from Eastern Europe and Africa posted strong gains; volumes from Asia-Pacific plummeted, especially of bottle grade polymer. Asia-Pacific was the region’s leading supplier of ABS, SAN, Polyacetal, PC and PMMA.

This series of blogs quantifies imports and exports in 2024 of the major engineering polymers – ABS, SAN, Polyacetal, Polycarbonates, PMMA and PET bottle and film/fiber grades – 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.