Injection moulding in Europe – thriving or surviving?

According to a new study by UK-based leading industry consultants, Applied Market Information Ltd (AMI Consulting), the European injection moulding industry is thriving as most of its markets have recovered from the economic collapse which struck over a decade ago. In 2018 the industry value from virgin polymer exceeded €85bn, an average growth of 3% per annum since 2007. The industry is also taking increasing advantage of the use of recyclate feedstocks which added about 8% to the industry value in 2018.

A victory for versatility
The versatility of the injection moulding process lends itself to serving an extremely diverse market portfolio with demand.
Each market faces different opportunities and challenges e.g. plastics sector and the applications it serves comes under increasing environmental scrutiny. All the key market segments have grown, with packaging exhibiting the most sustained growth whilst automotive has seen most robust growth in the last four years. Overall demand for injection moulding has seen an average growth of 1.6% per annum in virgin polymer demand, taking it above 12 million tonnes in 2018.

Injection moulding is the most fragmented plastics industry with at least 8,000 companies operating the process in Europe. These businesses range from being single site moulding operations (over 90%) through to multi-national enterprises with many moulding locations in Europe.

Surviving
The industry is attracting private equity investment and some companies are publicly quoted but about 95% of the businesses are family-owned.

However, the fragmentation of the injection moulding industry and the plethora of markets it serves leads to an intensely competitive business environment in which there have been winners and losers. Since 2014 the total number of injection moulding sites in Europe has fallen, despite substantial investment in new sites in Central Europe. Companies have closed or consolidated mainly because of a shift of the customer base within Europe, its exit from the region, or its decline in Europe due to inter-regional competition or technology progression.

Published in January 2019, the ‘Injection Moulding in Europe: Industry value, structure & market dynamics 2019’ report identifies the few hundred moulders that process more than 10,000 tonnes of polymer per year and discusses those processing more than 15,000 tonnes in the context of the markets they serve. Together these companies represent approximately 58% of the total volume of virgin polymer processed by injection moulding.