Brazil as a key player

Brazil - Excessive consistency
The economy has become less unsettled and more rational

The least that can be said of Brazil in 2004 is that it was as atypical in its ebullience as it was prostrate in 2003. Led by China and the U.S., the world economy hovered over its highest growth level for two decades. The size of this international liquidity and the rise in the price of agricultural commodities help to explain the figure of US$ 100 billion paid for Brazilian exports in 2004. This surplus on the trade balance and the explosion in domestic consumption – caused by the expansion of credit and collective wages (1.5%) – led to a 4.9% jump in GDP. As a result...   Read more... (PDF, 163 KB)

Raw Materials - Demarcation by zone
Three regions dictate thermoplastics production

The three tables on the following pages present, didactically, the classic arrangement of Brazilian production of basic petrochemicals, the main thermoplastics and their intermediate products. Into this picture, bursts the largest petrochemical complex in Latin America and among its indicators are the nominal capacity of producing around 3 million tons a year of ethylene and 6,5 million tons of commodity resin – of which in the range of 4,5 million tons a year comes from the polyolefines complex. The overwhelming majority...   Read more... (PDF, 463 KB)

Machinery - Independent flight
The range of equipment that Brazil does not supply is getting increasingly small

After years of slowdown, the Brazilian plastics machinery industry surprised the market with a jump of 57% in nominal sales in 2004. This high jump has been extended by the sales forecasts into 2005, backed by economy stability and recognition by processors that modernizing their plant machinery means increasing production with savings of resin, power, time and labor. Repeated for years on end, the argument has finally persuaded customers; so says the consensus in the machinery field, because of the increasing competition in the processing sector, where mediumsized companies are taking off, and because of globalization and resulting cheapening of production technology. It is a shift of mentality...   Read more... (PDF, 133 KB)

Processing - This good feeling won't go away
The plastics artifacts industry never had so many ways of growing

It has been a long time coming, but, in 2004, Brazil crossed the barrier of four million tons of plastic articles consumed. Rounding, the forecast reaches 4.3 million processed tons and supports the claim that the standard growth of material is around two to three times that of GDP. After all, the increase in the apparent consumption of resins has been around 11% a year in recent times compared with 4.9% for GDP. For 2005, it is expected that, pumped up by the patent increase in credit granting and collective wages, the traditional second-half year's heating up is heading toward breathing life into plastics processors with a fresh round of major expansion...   Read more... (PDF, 141 KB)