PVC owes its origin to the tremendous strides made by chemical industry in the early decades of the last century. Today PVC is an important raw material used in many sectors.
Global output of PVC is estimated to be around 34 million tons in 2007. As in the case of other polymers Asia is the main centre of growth for PVC.
India’s PVC production is estimated to be around 100,000 tons. Tipped to be the third largest consumer of polymer after U.S and China in the next couple of years import is going to play a crucial role in the case of PVC also.
The polymer industry is growing at about 12-15% annually. Over the last few years, the Indian Petrochemicals industry has witnessed consolidation phase. The top players - Reliance, IPCL, Haldia Petrochemicals (HPL) and GAIL - hold the majority of the polymer capacity in the domestic market.
The domestic polymer prices show high variation on a monthly basis. The instability in domestic prices is principally attributed to wide variation in international prices and the imported raw material prices.
The monthly variation in the prices of polymers recorded less than 2%, between 2-5% and more than 5% in about 34%, 28% and 38% times respectively over the past two years.
There are whole lot of producers and buyers in the production and supply chain whose business is highly dependent on the right price discovery of plastics.
With liberalized government policy in place, more number of players are expected to enter, participate and grow in the polymer industry in the coming days, resulting in higher demand for right pricing & price risk management.
