Insights & News

Plastics News, December 19, 2017 An increase in U.S. housing starts gave a boost to the regional PVC market through most of 2017. Through October, housing starts were on pace to finish at around 1.25 million units, up a little more than 4 percent vs. 2016. In a similar trend, domestic U.S./Canadian PVC sales — more than 60 percent of which come from construction uses — were up more than 4 percent in the first 10 months of the year.

Plastics News, September 27, 2017 Four U.S. PET resin makers are asking for anti-dumping duties to be placed on PET imported from five countries. PET makers DAK Americas LLC, Indorama Ventures USA Inc., M&G Polymers USA LLC and Nan Ya Plastics Corp. America have filed petitions alleging that imports of PET resin from Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, Pakistan and Taiwan are being sold at less than fair value in the U.S. and are causing material injury to the domestic industry.

Plastics News, September 19, 2017 German giant BASF SE has entered a 1.6 billion euro ($1.9 billion) deal to buy Solvay SA’s nylon business, the two chemical companies announced Sept. 19. Phil Karig, managing director with the Mathelin Bay LLC consulting firm in St. Louis, said the transaction "looks like a win-win deal for both the buyer and the seller." "At the heart of this deal is the fact that a product line that one company considers to be a commodity — or at least not a specialty — can be considered more of a specialty — or at least an engineering resin — by another company." he said in an email.

Private equity investors specializing in the middle market (buyout transactions of $ 25 million to $ 1 billion according to PitchBook Data, Inc.) often find themselves with the opportunity to acquire plastics processors. While some private equity companies have had many years and many transactions worth of experience in the plastics space it is quite common for private equity companies that specialize in middle market industrial companies in general to find themselves presented with a plastics processing company opportunity for the first time.

It is not unusual for plastic resin buyers, whether purchasing large or small quantities of plastics, to have suppliers present them with the opportunity to buy some resins on a contract basis as an alternative to buying all of their resin on a spot price basis.