Lucrative Growth Market: The market for silicones

16-Jun-2014 - Germany

silicones are irreplaceable in many industrial sectors. Silicone elastomers, silicone oils and silicone resins are the most important product types that are manufactured based on quartz sand. They are utilized in construction, automotive and E&E industries as well as in medical technology, cosmetics, textiles and paper or in innumerable day-to-day goods. Growth of this market is astonishing: According to the latest study of Ceresana, worldwide revenues generated with silicones rose by 6.7% p.a. since 2005. In 2013, silicones valuing about US$15.5 billion were sold. The market research institute expects sales of silicone to increase by another 5% in the next years.

Multifunctionality

A decisive advantage for manufacturers of silicone is the variety of sales markets for silicone products. Demand is distributed evenly among several large sectors. The most important growth motors are the sectors construction and E&E. In the construction industry, silicones are mainly used as sealants, adhesives and in coatings. The continuous boom of the construction sector in China and the recovery of the American construction sector are likely to result in an increase of global market value in the construction industry by 5.4% p.a. in the upcoming years. Ceresana expects similarly high growth rates for the sector E&E, the application reporting the highest revenues. In this segment, silicones are already used in keyboards, computers, telephones and several other products, and application possibilities keep increasing. A new and strong growth market are lenses for LED lights made from silicone rubber.

Asia-Pacific Increasing World Market Share

Asia-Pacific accounted for more than half of global silicones production in 2013. China is the largest consumer of silicones worldwide. The gap to the second and third largest sales markets, Western Europe and the USA, is likely to widen in the future. However, China is still producing and using a larger amount of rather cheap products than of high-end specialty silicones. Thus, relative revenues (compared to consumption) in industrialized countries are much higher.

Elastomers and Silicone Oils Most Important Products

Especially because of the large E&E industry, Asia-Pacific consumes a disproportionately large amount of silicone elastomers. Net import in Asian countries will fall in the future, since China in particular massively expanded production capacity in previous years. Market values of elastomers in Western Europe and North America are almost as high as market values of silicone oils. The market for silicone resins has so far been accounting for a much smaller market share in all regions, but is likely to develop at sound growth rates.

https://www.chemeurope.com/en/news/148671/lucrative-growth-market-the-market-for-silicones.html