The European plastics and rubber machinery association Euromap (Frankfurt / Germany; www.euromap.org) is collaborating with Brazilian chemicals consultancy Maxiquim (Porto Alegre; www.maxiquim.com) to investigate opportunities in Brazil. Brazil is Europe’s most important trading partner in Latin America, and exports of plastics and rubber machinery from the EU to Brazil was EUR 169m in 2018, Euromap says.

The association has commissioned Maxiquim to analyse the current machine installations and evaluate prospects for the future. Maxiquim started by analysing the packaging industry, interviewing 75 companies producing consumer and industrial packaging. It concluded that the market is dominated by smaller companies with up to 100 employees and capacities of less than 5,000 t/y of processed material. The machines have an average age of 10 years – similar to the situation in Europe.

The economic recession in Brazil in recent years has affected investments, and machine utilisation rates were found to be relatively low, averaging 75%. However, 40% of the packaging companies plan investments in the next five years, of which some are more than EUR 1m, according to the Maxiquim research. Future investments will depend on an effective resumption of machine utilisation rates, and higher investments are expected for injection moulding than for extrusion.

Higher value-added products such as multilayer flexible packaging were identified as a future trend. As a result, machine quality was cited as the most important purchasing factor, followed by price. Although an increasing level of automation and productivity is requested, Industry 4.0 (smart factory) has not really reached Brazil yet, according to the research. Follow-up studies are planned for other plastics machinery segments, such as automotive, Euromap says.