Opportunities for Composites

Despite the decline of theEuropean production industryas well as the plastics industrybetween 2008 and 2009, futureprospects and growthopportunities throughout thecomposites market aredefinitely favourable - accordingto the annual market reportpresented by Elmar Witten,managing director of AVK (theGerman Federation ofReinforced Plastics) during theinternational conference thatwas held in Stuttgartconcurrently with CompositesEurope 2010 (October 27-29).By the end of 2009 theproduction volume of theEuropean market for fibre-reinforced plastics &composites will probably havedropped by about one third ascompared to 2007. Not allsegments of this highlyheterogeneous market,however, are feeling the crunchin quite the same way. This year AVK not onlyperformed a survey in order todetermine 2008 productionvolumes for fibre-reinforcedplastics. For the first time, owingto the dynamic marketdevelopment, an assessmentregarding the current year(2009) was included too. Inorder to obtain comparabledata, the "entire“ Europeanmarket analysed in this contextwas once more limited to thosecountries that are familiar to rawmaterial suppliers interviewed inthis context. Market data collection focuseson glassfibre-reinforced plastics(GFP) which, in quantitativeterms, are still heading the list ofreinforcing materials. Thedevelopment of carbon-reinforced plastics and naturalfibre-reinforced plasticscontinues to be elusive.