Resins Market Update

The resins market is expected to continue its steady recovery thanks largely to gains made in both the housing and automotive markets.

“The architectural coatings market showed mid-single-digit growth in 2014,” said John J. Hiel, Arkema Coating Resins North American marketing manager. “Existing home sales is the most predictive leading indicator of architectural coatings demand and 2014’s total fell short of 2013.  

“However, this was offset by continued strong unit turnover and property upkeep demands in the multi-family market, as a result of increased mobility of renters.  The industrial resins market continued its slow recovery, with the automotive market being particularly strong again in 2014.”

Julie Fuell, coatings sales director at Reichhold, said that though she believes the coatings sector is slowly recovering from the economic downturn and volumes are up in certain markets for the first quarter of 2015. “We are optimistic that the increase in consumer confidence seen in March will continue to improv