Market developments, trends, outlook and challenges
After six consecutive years of growth in GRP production volumes in Europe, the overall market is expected to stagnate for the first time in 2019. The total volume of 1.141 million tons thus remains stable. This stagnation does not affect all areas to the same extent and the trend is again heterogeneous.
While individual areas such as SMC/BMC, pultrusion and thermoplastic processes are continuing to grow, production levels in other areas are declining. GRP, i.e. glass fiber reinforced systems, remain the clearly dominant material in terms of volume, with a market share of well over 90% in the reinforced plastics/composites segment, irrespective of developments in other market segments.