WORLD MARKETS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS FOR POLYESTER FIBERS

The total world market for all synthetic fibers in 2002 was around 36,000,000 tons. Of this
total, 21,500,000 tons is PET and the rate of consumption is still growing, although
apparently slowing. Over the past 15 years, there have been cataclysmic changes in the
polyester-producing fiber business. The gradual eclipse of the textile industry in the United
States and much of western Europe and its geographical shift to Asia and other places, such
as Central America and parts of Eastern Europe, has brought about these changes. Old,
firms like ICI, Hoechst, Monsanto, and Eastman have disappeared completely from
the fiber-producing scene. The last survivor was DuPont which announced in February
2002 that they would split off all their fiber and textile interests as a separate industry
under the name Invista. In November 2003, Koch Industries announced that they would
acquire Invista.
The new generation of polyester fiber producers buy polymer in the open market as a
commodity item and convert it into fiber and yarn. They have revolutionized the market and
superseded the old order. Koch Industries buy PPT polymer from Shell and spin Corterra
fibers and market them, although Shell retains the trademark and Koch proposes to build its
own polymer plant in Mexico. The emergence of China as a major consumer and producer of
polyester fiber (it outstripped the United States in polyester production in 1998) will have a
major effect on world markets.
The market for polyester fiber will certainly continue to grow overall, although, as a major
commodity item, it is likely to be affected much more than in the past by global economics and
trade cycles. Certainly, the price of raw materials like crude oil and natural gas will have an
effect on process costs and markets. Nevertheless, there is still a trend to replace other fibers,
both natural and synthetic, with polyester. Nylon is still losing markets to polyester. At present,
nylon dominates polyester in domestic carpet yarns, but because PET is cheaper, it has a
growing share of the contract carpet trade. The new microfibers and newer easy-to-dye
polyesters with excellent resilience (like PTT) would be expected to make big inroads into
floor coverings and the apparel markets over the next few years. It was confidently expected
that PTT would have an immediate impact on the carpet business (one place where PET
polyester suffers) in 1999–2000 when Corterra was first launched. So far this has not happened,
but fiber price and availability are major factors as always. In the long term, there are new
nonoil-based biomass-derived processes in commercial production for making not just intermediates
for polyesters but even the polymers themselves. The effect of recycling polyester such
as soda bottles into fiberfill and carpet yarns may also have unpredictable effects.