Plastic Calendering Resins Market: Synthetic Leather Growth and the PVC Scrutiny Question

The period from 2020 to 2025 combined a demand shock, a logistics crisis and the largest capacity wave in the industry's history, producing a historical CAGR near 3.1% on value while volumes grew faster. Pandemic packaging demand lifted 2020 and 2021 sharply, then durables demand fell away. Chinese coal-to-olefins and Gulf integrated capacity kept arriving throughout, and pricing absorbed the difference.
Base case 4.2% rests on three mechanisms. Capacity closures across Europe and Japan are removing high-cost assets faster than most forecasts assumed, which will slowly repair operating rates from the supply side rather than the demand side. Indian and Southeast Asian conversion demand is growing at multiples of the global rate as packaging, construction and automotive consumption deepen. And recycled content mandates in Europe and several American states are creating a price-inelastic demand pool that did not previously exist.
The bull case at 5.4% assumes faster rationalisation of Western capacity alongside firmer Chinese demand, which together would lift operating rates into the high eighties and restore commodity margins. The bear case at 3.0% is continued Chinese capacity addition into a slower domestic economy, pushing net exports outward and holding global rates near current levels for the whole decade.