Plastic Compounders Exhibit Strong Growth Despite Rising Regulatory Pressures

1/27/2019 | 5 min read

This Thomas Index Report is sponsored by Hoehn Plastics, a leader in providing high-quality recycled resins to the injection molding industry.

Hello again. This week we’re going to take a look at sourcing for Plastic Compounding Services by users of the Thomasnet.com platform. Our data shows that sourcing activity for this category is up 44% month-over-month.

Our firmographic buyer data shows that the three top industries driving this sourcing trend on our platform are transportation & logistics, manufacturing, and retail & distribution.

Plastic compounding is a huge and highly competitive category. According to Persistence Market Research, global sales of plastic compounds reached nearly 300 million tons in 2017, and are projected to reach nearly 500 million tons by 2025. Despite growing anti-plastic activism and regulatory barriers, the plastics industry continues to see significant year-over-year growth. Here in the U.S., much of this growth can be attributed to the strong economy, with plastic being used extensively in booming sectors such as construction, consumer electronics, and the medical devices industry. Developing countries are also driving significant demand for plastics, in everything from single-use plastic packaging to infrastructure development.

In addition to Plastic Compounding, our data shows that sourcing activity for the related categories of Plastic Resin Pellets, Extruded Plastics, and Plastic Recycling Services are all up over 17% month-over-month on our platform.

Moving on from Plastics, here’s a look at the top ten industrial product and service categories being sourced on the Thomasnet.com platform over the past four weeks:

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Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next week.