IBS NOTEBOOK: Innovation and Market Demands Drive Plastics Growth in Building and Construction Sector
The report, “Plastics Market Watch: Building and Construction” is the fourth in a series published by SPI analyzing key factors impacting the plastic industry’s key end markets.
“From floors to roofs, inside and outside of walls, plastics are a go-to product on construction sites around the world,” said William R. Carteaux, SPI President and CEO. “Innovation in the plastics industry to improve and diversify products is matched by the building and construction sector’s pace to find, and use, new solutions to address fundamental issues like structural integrity, energy savings, recycling, and cost savings.”
The leading uses of plastics for residential and commercial construction include roofing, insulation, wall coverings, windows, piping, composite “lumber” planks and rails, flooring and structure wraps.
According to the report, while the building and construction sector has not regained its prerecession vigor, it is making steady progress with the promise of growth in the future. Globally, China, India, and the U.S. will be the primary drivers of construction activity as India is on pace to overtake Japan as the third largest construction market between 2017 and 2022.
Domestically, an estimated 1.3 million new housing units will be needed per year for the next decade to keep pace with population growth and existing housing unit characteristics, a dramatic increase of several hundred thousand more per year when compared to the Great Recession. “The buying behavior and economic security of Generation Y and Millennials will be the key over the next several years,” Carteaux explained. “Encouraging signals from recent surveys indicate that younger generations are increasingly inclined to buy homes.”
The dramatic inroads made by plastics on building and construction sites according to the SPI study are linked to plastics’ utility, cost, ease of installation, longevity and the “propensity of the plastics industry to constantly develop new products to supersede traditional building materials in many phases of the building process.”
Advances in plastics have been embraced by architects, engineers and designers as reported by a Columbia University conference, “Permanent Change: Plastics in Architecture and Engineering.”
The Columbia conference, with more than 300 attendees, reported, “Plastics have become one of the most ubiquitous and increasingly permanent materials in construction. The material capabilities of plastics, both as a generic material and as specific polymers, and the processes that underlie them, suggest a potential to reshape construction and the roles of architects and engineers in construction. While plastics are perhaps the most intensively engineered building materials today, we are still in the early stages of understanding them in terms of their potential applications and uses.”
“Plastics play an exciting and growing role in building and construction around the world, particularly given the drive to find ‘Smart’ designs with improved environmental and energy efficiencies,” Carteaux concluded. “Our industry needs to continue to collaborate with engineers and architects on building materials and find new innovations and advances. We have a strong, versatile, and ecologically responsible material—the plastics industry should expand its presence on construction sites in the years ahead.”
SPI will continue its Plastics Market Watch reports in 2016—“Automotive Recycling” will be published in the first quarter. Previous reports, including “Automotive & Transportation, “Healthcare & Medical Devices” and “Packaging” are available on the SPI website.