PETpla.net Insider 05 / 2013

MATERIAL / RECYCLING 13 PET planet insider Vol. 14 Currently, the situation has returned to normal, but remains fragile. Joy Mukherjee , Head of Poly- meric Business at Amgulf Polymers & Chemicals, added that PET prices remained low because of market satu- ration, and that is why the producers’ margins have been decreasing. But producers in the Middle East countries have gained a predominant position because of prime low cost positioning and in-house raw materials avail- ability, especially of MEG. In addition, their favourable geographical location allows them to cut down logistics costs. Joy Mukherjee spoke about Middle East production capacities, and also high- lighted the desire of Gulf pro- ducers to become leaders in export. In 2013 the total pro- duction in the Gulf will reach 1.985 million tons. However, due to the limited size of the local market, the Middle East producers are relying on the volume of exports. Taking into account the situation in Euro- pean countries, exporters are investigating new markets. Global PET recycling data PET recycling issues were also raised at the Confer- ence. David Swift noted that the collection rate for recy- cling in China is estimated at 85%, in Japan it is about 50% (8.1 million tons). Almost 22% of the volume collected is lost during processing. In contrast, Konstantin Rzaev , Member of the Board of Directors of Ekotekhnologiya Plant, spoke about the recy- cling industry in Russia where the average quantity of useful material from solid municipal waste amounts to between 5-15%. In Russia there are about 900 official disposal sites and fewer than 40 waste switching stations, therefore the price for recycled plastics is higher than in the major- ity of other countries. In 2012 Russian consumption of recy- cled PET amounted to about 94,000t, whilst production was at about 80,000t. The Russian PET market Alexander Shkurin , Senior Ana- lyst of Kortes Research and Infor- mation Center, continued the over- view of the Russian market. In 2012 PET production volume amounted to 4,526,000t, consumption was at 5,661,000t. He underlined the short- age of feedstock. The future of newly announced projects (total capacities may exceed 1.5 million t/a by 2015) is unclear due to the unresolved prob- lem of component supplies: there is a shortage of both terephthalic acid, and MEG. Russian imports amounted to 184,000t. PET preform production accounted for 91.8% of the total volume, while the share of grades for polymer fibres was a mere 8.2%. Main suppliers are China (41%) and South Korea (32%). The export volume was 70,500t.