The Polystyrene business had a difficult time during the nineties mainly due to :

	Higher cost due to feedstock prices
	Accelerated replacement by new Polyolefin products arising from catalyst development.
	Slow growth of new technologies in Polystyrene

While cost is still a worrying factor, the loss of demand due to replacement by Polyolefins seems to have reached a plateau. Newer technologies of super HIPS (High Impact Polystyrene) have improved the position of Polystyrene. Consolidation that has been seen during the last 5 years has created 4 major global prayers -

	Atofina (Merger of Atochem and Fina)
	BASF
	DOW
	NOVA (Acquistion of Arco, Hunstman and Shell's Polystyrene business)

Another consolidation of Enichem and Chevron Phillips will broaden the product range, including K-resin of Phillips and high impact, high ESCR products arising from Enichem's new generation continuous-mass technology.
The consolidation has resulted in the concentration of 57% of the global capacity with the top 10 players. There are still more than 50 producers having less than 50 kt capacity.

It is expected that Polystyrene would have about 3-4% growth for the next few years almost matching or surpassing global CDP growth. Asia and Latin America are expected to have a growth rate of 5 to 5.5 % while North America and Europe will have a growth rate of 2.5 - 3%. North Asia, and particularly China will continue to have the strongest growth.

SBC (K Resin) is a bright star in the Polystyrene business due to its rare combination of clarity and strength. There was however a major setback in the supply of SBC due to an accident that closed Phillips' 160KT plant in USA. Newer capacities of SBC or expansion of existing capacities are being put up. It is therefore expected that by 2002 the capacity of SBC will almost double.