Spunmelt Polypropylene: The Leading Global Technology for Nonwoven Supply and Demand

摘要

Our preliminary estimate of the global nameplate capacity of spunbonded/spunmelt polypropylene nonwovens at the beginning of 2015 is more than 3.3 million tons, up more than 6% over year-end 2013. This rate of capacity growth was abnormally high as producers raced to install modern technology to meet changing and growing demand, position themselves in high growth regional markets and be cost competitive. We expect the growth in global capacity from 2014-2019 to average less than 3% per year. Year-over-year annual capacity growth may be higher due to uneven installations of capacity. Global demand growth for nonwovens made on this technology is growing about 5% per year in tons and more in square meters. We expect demand to grow about 5.8% per year in square meters from 2014-2019. Higher square meter demand growth is related to the growing use of lower weight nonwovens in hygiene end uses which results in lower demand in tons. On the basis of tons, we estimate that global machine capacity utilization fell slightly in 2014 to about 82% of output capacity but was higher on the basis of square meters.