The chemical fiber industry is one of the oldest industries in manufacturing. This industry not only plays a critical role on meeting the day to day needs of an individual but it also contributes greatly towards the industrial as well as economic growth of a nation The global chemical fiber industry is estimated to be worth about 2.4 trillion and is one of the fastest growing sectors in the manufacturing industry. This industry also ships 3.4 billion worth of chemicals globally, across many nations.

The global chemical fire industry has seen a noteworthy structural change in the last few years like the shift of the manufacturing locations to the Asian countries, new technology, new emerging growth markets as well as the large scale impact of the global economic crisis along with the rising costs of raw materials. Over the last two years, the commodity as well as the specialty chemical segments has declined quite sharply in its demand and margin as a result of the global economic crisis. It has been expected, that the chemical fiber demand is likely to be back in the developed markets although less significant than the Asian demand.

All the chemical majors in the industry are expecting higher sales growth of their chemicals products as this demand would be greatly coming from emerging markets such as India, Korea, China and Brazil. The Middle East has also seen quite a lot of investments and is attracting new capacity, given its considerable potential advantage in low cost hydrocarbon feed stocks mainly supported by near access to Crude oil. This is mainly due to higher GDP growth rates attributed to economic growth as well as new application development areas in these regions. The global chemical industry will retain a strict focus on managing the cash flow, controlling operating rates and also secure raw materials globally.

The key challenges in this particular industry are its growing regulations and its carbon emission policies that are pushing companies towards greener products and to turn away from petro chemicals based feed stocks. In order to satisfy the growing demand for less environmentally harmful products and also a more dedicated approach to minimizing industrial waste, green chemistry continues to grow and is expected to be worth around 100 billion by 2020. Renewable chemical market is currently worth about 76 billion and it has an annual growth of about 13%.