The shining India has given a boost to the Indian plastic processing industry in 2003-2004. The plastic machinery business grew to almost Rs. 800 crores in 2003-2004. In fact, the growth is more than 20% compared to an average of 9% that was achieved in the last 5 years. Most of the machinery suppliers were very buoyant and claimed to have one of the best years in the last 5 years.

The extrusion sector having more than 55-60% share of the plastic machinery business has done extremely well mainly in 3 areas: PP/PE raffia, PVC pipe, PE/PP film. The increasing demand on FIBC for export has given a boost to the raffia machinery sector. Besides, the new investment in the Eastern India has also contributed in the growth. The existing processors procured the higher output machinery to acheive better - cost economy. PVC pipe industry is looking forward to better business oppurtunity because of several micro irrigation projects that are likely to be implemented in the next 2-3 years. Also drinking water supply projects are being pursued by states. PE pipes also get the benefit of these projects but the demand for PE pipe machinery was stagnant mainly because of the existing higher capacity. In the film sector almost 30KT of cast film capacity was added over the last 1-2 years. BOPP and BOPET sector also increased the capacity significantly. Over all an addition of about 300 KT of the extruded products capacity was increased against possible increase of about 150 KT of the extruded products in 2003-2004.

The automotive and consumer durable sectors were the drivers for growth of injection moulding machinery. It is estimated that more than 1500 machines were sold increasing the injection moulding capacity by about 275 - 300KT.

The blow moulding sector also grew by more than 10% despite PET taking some beating due to incidence of pesticide in the cola beverage observed. HDPE blow moulding sector helped in achieving the growth.

It is estimated that the imported machinery had about 10% market share in 2003-2004 compared to 5-7 % that is normally observed in the last few years.

While the Indian business did increase well, the export of the Indian machinery also showed a very positive growth. Some of the leading plastic machinery manufacturers clocked a growth of more than 40% in the export market.

The Indian plastic processing capacity on April 01, 2004 seems to have reached more than 10 million tonnes compared to about 5.5 million tonnes of the actual processing output (including the recycling / scrap processing)