Market research organisation Ceresana has released its third annual market report on the fillers industry – and the outlook is positive. The group forecasts revenues generated on the global market for fillers to rise to approximately $27.7 billion by 2021.
For 2013, Ceresana has identified Asia-Pacific was the largest worldwide sales market for fillers, accounting for 48% of total demand, followed by Western Europe and North America. The two key applications for fillers are plastics and elastomers. A trend towards the use highly filled compounds, containing up to 85% of fillers, has been identified in the study. The growing use of nanofillers is another trend, presumably due to the fact that they can increase the share of fillers in a product and improve the product's characteristics at the same time.
The most commonly used filler on the global market is ground calcium carbonate (GCC), followed by precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) and carbon black, says Ceresana. Other fillers used in significant quantities are kaolin and talc. All other types of fillers reached an aggregated market share of only 9%. Demand for almost all types will increase steadily, claims the report, with the highest growth rates of more than 3% p.a. being forecast for carbon black and talc. The use of carbon black as a filler in the tyre industry in particular will continue to increase considerably, due to the massive expansion of the automotive industries in China and India.
As fillers can be used in applications in various industrial sectors, the development of the market for fillers largely follows the macroeconomic development of a country. As such, Ceresana noted that the sales markets for fillers in China and India are developing very rapidly. China single-handedly accounts for increases in demand of almost one million tonnes per year, which is likely to result in Asia-Pacific accounting for more than half of total global output of fillers by 2016.
The full report can be purchased here.
