Jonathan Crozier, pinfa summarised trends in flame retardants requirements as seen by pinfa member companies (input collected under anti-trust rules), and market tendencies indicated by different experts and studies, in particular Markets&Markets who kindly allowed to use this data for the event presentation. He underlined that both regulatory requirements and industry voluntary product specifications are pushing towards better levels of fire safety worldwide, whilst at the same time regulations are increasingly banning conventional halogen flame retardants. Labels such as EPEAT (widely used for public purchasing) limit the use of brominated and chlorinated flame retardants, and propose to use health and environment evaluation systems for substitutes (such as GreenScreen).
The global flame retardant market is expected to grow at >6% per year through to 2025, with growth >5% for all types of flame retardants and the highest growth rate for phosphorus-based PIN FRs. The largest and fastest growing market is Asia, in particular for electrical and electronics goods (E&E). Construction is also a major driver of demand for fire safety. Needs for flame retardants are expanding with development of a wide range of polymers, including products for epoxies, ABS, unsaturated polyester resins, PVC, polyolefins.
The pinfa product selector https://www.pinfa.eu/product-selector/ enables to identify and find information on PIN flame retardants for different polymers and applications and is open to both pinfa members and non-members.
pinfa is the non-halogenated phosphorus, nitrogen, inorganic flame retardant association (a sector group of Cefic, the European chemical industry council). The presenter thanked for input the MarketsandMarkets flame retardants report – global forecast to 2021 https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/flame-retardant-chemicals-market-686.html