ASIAN PLASTICS WAY DOWN
The plastics industry is being hurt big-time in the Asian economic downturn. Growth rates that were predicted to approach 9% in January of 1997 are now forecast to show a -1% in the latest forecast of February of 1998. The economy has also affected the exchange rate and examples are: Indonesia whose currency has dropped 74% against the U.S. dollar since July 1, 1997; South Korea is down 48%; Thailand and Malaysia are down 43% and 33% respectively. Some of the plastic producers, such as Korea will be having a hard time exporting polyethylene because of their high cost of production and the ripple effect of the Asian downturn. A year ago the European manufacturers were shipping many goods to the Asian market and these are now cut off because of the currency devaluations. This makes it extremely difficult for producers of raw material to export materials since there is a lack of demand because of the drying up of the export market. As yet, the U.S. has not been affected nearly as much as the Europeans, but there is a chance that by this time next year we will be feeling the same affects as Europe and Asia.