JEC Composites Market Focus

2020 has been an exceptional year, on account of the very nature of the crisis and its scope. While the cir-cumstances are unprecedented, recurring crises have arisen involving oil, the dot.com bubble, subprime mortgages, and so on, since the end of WW2. About every ten years, the global economy gets shaken up, yet the economy and trade resume with greater inten-sity each time. Today, no signs indicate that it will be any different once this new crisis has abated. It should be noted straightaway that in general, countries with strong growth continue to show such growth and often progress even more quickly after a crisis.

But all is not said and done for this situation, which will continue to evolve. Moreover, it varies from one region to another, from one country to another, and from one business sector to another. One can see that it is not uniform—far from it, in fact. Though we still lack data allowing a final, detailed assessment to be made of the health crisis for each segment of our value chain, we have a good idea of its impact overall, and on future trends.

The impact of the health crisis has been felt across the world and decreases in GDP can be as severe as -15% in some countries, which is substantial. The majority, however, have experienced drops ranging from -5% to -10%. One of the charts published here indicates that countries with lower growth rates before the crisis are also the ones experiencing the most severe downturns.

Impact on the composites industry has certainly been felt, as in 2020, the downturn was around -14% in vo-lume. This is a slump bringing the market back to levels recorded in 2014, which were about 10 MT. The drop follows two long periods of growth, seeing 8% growth from 1960-2010, then 4% during 2010-2020 and 2021 should end with an average growth of 14% to come at its 2019 level. In 2020, all sectors of application were affected, except for Wind, which continues to prosper.

In 2021, the broad balance in place before the crisis still stands. Today, in terms of volume, China is the leading region for composites in the world, with Europe and North America preserving their edge on application va-lue. But this is a differential that tends to lessen over time.

There are also good reasons to think that better days are ahead. Hydrogen is stirring up growing interest and offers bona fide openings for composites, in particular in the transport sector. With this in mind, expectations are running high across the world.

In this document, discover the trends and key players in our industry, taken from the JEC Observer 2020-2025 study (conducted by Estin & Co for JEC Group during the COVID-19 crisis).