This Week In Business ter to producers. Early this month, H. Dorn Stewart, president of Allied Chemical's Barrett division, predicted that the industry will have to expand 5 0 % between now and 1970 just to supply the demand for building ma terials made of plastic. By then, he figures, sales of building materials made from plastics will be bigger than those of the entire plastics industry are now. Plastics in building ma terials now constitute a $450 million business, he estimates; by 1970, he
expects them to do a $4.5 billion business annually. Sales of all plastics amount to about $3 billion a year now, he says. According to U.S. Industrial Chem icals' estimates, polyethylene use in coating flexible packaging materials (aluminum foil, cellophane, and poly ester film) will rise from approximately 23 million pounds in 1960 to 38 mil lion pounds in 1965. In 1962, output of converted flex ible packaging products is expected to
VINYL RESINS
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DECEMBER
18,
1961
be 5 to 1 0 % higher than in 1960. Output in the first three quarters of 1961 was 1 % below that of the same period in 1960, but the Business and Defense Services Administration ex pects output to rise sufficiently in this quarter to put the 1961 total about even with that for 1960. But, accord ing to BDSA, even though total out put has been down this year, produc tion of polyethylene bags and poly ethylene printed rolls, along with lam inated or coated foils, has increased.
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DEC.
18,
196 1 C & E N
37
