What’s at Stake for the Plastics Industry
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While Europe continues to lose ground in global production and shows signs of industrial stagnation, the Italian plastics supply chain remains a strategic asset for the national manufacturing sector. The challenge today is to transform the circular transition into a driver of competitiveness rather than an additional source of pressure.
For years, plastics have primarily been viewed as a material to rethink from an environmental perspective. Today, however, the issue is broader and more urgent: understanding whether Europe is still capable of maintaining industrial leadership in a supply chain that remains essential for manufacturing, material innovation, and the development of the circular economy.
Recent data show a European sector that continues to produce, but within an increasingly fragile framework: stagnant volumes, declining global market share, and shrinking numbers of companies and jobs. It is within this tension — between transition and industrial resilience — that the Italian case must also be understood.
According to the latest data published by Plastics Europe, in 2024 European plastics production reached 54.6 million tonnes, showing only marginal recovery compared to 2023 (+0.4%), but still down 12.4% compared to 2018. During the same period, Europe’s share of global production fell to 12%, while worldwide production reached 430.9 million tonnes. Industrial indicators also point to a weakening phase: around 50,650 companies, 1.5 million employees, and €398 billion in turnover, but with approximately 3,000 companies and 35,000 jobs lost since 2022.
While the European context shows signs of stagnation and declining competitive weight, the Italian plastics industry continues to hold a central position within national manufacturing. Precisely for this reason, however, it is now facing increasing pressure: regulation, energy costs, international trade, and investment capacity are no longer background variables, but factors directly affecting the sector’s industrial resilience. This picture emerges from the report The Plastics Industry in Italy. Strategy and Action Lines to Support Competitiveness and Circularity, published by TEHA Group in July 2025.
The Italian Focus Within European Fragility
The latest TEHA Group report describes a supply chain that remains among the country’s most significant industrial sectors. In 2023 it generated €58.4 billion in turnover, €15.3 billion in added value, and around 164,000 jobs, ranking second in the EU-27 for production value.
This is a sector representing 4.9% of Italian manufacturing and maintaining a strong export orientation, with €25 billion in exports in 2024.
The importance of these figures lies not only in their scale, but also in the structure of the industry itself. According to TEHA, Italy has the highest number of companies in the European plastics supply chain, accounting for 16% of the EU total, with a predominance of micro-enterprises alongside a widespread base of specialized small and medium-sized industrial companies.
This makes the sector flexible and widespread, but also more exposed to external shocks, compliance costs, and supply-chain instability.
Export, Europe, and Supply Chains
The Italian plastics industry relies heavily on its strong international orientation. More than two-thirds of exports are directed toward the EU market, which remains the sector’s primary commercial outlet and competitive balance point.
Alongside this strength, however, vulnerabilities are emerging across global supply chains: China plays a significant role in imports, particularly in machinery and processing segments, while the United States remains an important market potentially exposed to tariff tensions.
The broader European framework confirms that competitiveness is no longer merely a future concern. Data published by Plastics Europe for 2024 show that the EU has become a net importer of plastics for the third consecutive year, with a negative trade balance of 1.6 million tonnes.
The United States is now the leading origin of extra-EU imports by volume, while the worsening trade balance reflects a broader decline in Europe’s industrial weight globally.
This dynamic fits into an increasingly unstable economic scenario. The TEHA report highlights geopolitical tensions as a growing source of pressure for the Italian supply chain, precisely because they affect destination markets, imports of strategic inputs, and trade conditions with non-EU partners.
In this context, the centrality of the European market is not merely a commercial factor — it is also an element of industrial security.
Brussels Brings Competitiveness Back to the Center
It is within this context that TEHA Group describes the latest wave of European regulation as a “regulatory tsunami” for the sector.
Recent regulatory instruments — including REACH, the SUP (Single-Use Plastics Directive), ESPR (Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation), the Waste Framework Directive, and the Plastics Own Resource — have introduced new requirements, compliance obligations, and additional costs, forcing companies to rethink entire value chains: materials, product design, recycling, traceability, and reporting.
What is particularly interesting, however, is that Europe is already attempting to correct its course.
According to the study, the European Commission has started repositioning competitiveness at the center of industrial policy, integrating it with decarbonization objectives. The Competitiveness Compass, the Clean Industrial Deal, and the subsequent Chemicals Industry Package should therefore be interpreted not as a reduction of environmental ambitions, but as an attempt to realign them with the economic sustainability of Europe’s industrial base.
Sustainability Is a Transition That Must Be Managed
The TEHA report identifies this as the central point of the debate: circularity cannot rely solely on mechanical recycling.
To significantly increase material recovery, it will be necessary to enhance the complementarity between mechanical, chemical, and organic recycling. At European scale, in the best-case scenario, this combination could allow up to 80% of plastic waste to be treated by 2040.
In Italy, the best-case scenario would require more than €2.6 billion in investments to develop a chemical recycling supply chain capable of treating approximately 0.93 million tonnes of plastic waste.
The latest European data help frame the issue more clearly. According to Plastics Europe, circular plastics accounted for 15.4% of European production in 2024, totaling 8.4 million tonnes.
This is a significant figure, but still insufficient to indicate real acceleration: the share appears substantially stagnant, showing that the transition toward a circular system has begun but is not yet consolidated at industrial scale.
The real issue, however, is economic.
The TEHA study clearly states that energy costs and the burden of the EU ETS risk undermining the financial sustainability of chemical recycling in Italy. According to the report’s estimates, the Italian PUN electricity price in February 2025 exceeded €110/MWh, while ETS allowance prices were above €64, among the highest cost levels globally.
Without support measures, the investments required to strengthen circularity risk becoming industrially unsustainable.
Bioplastics Also Show That the Transition Must Be Managed Carefully
There is another strategic issue, less visible but equally important: the quality of demand and the resilience of innovative segments.
The study observes that the bioplastics sector, after years of strong growth, has entered a slowdown phase. After growing from €400 million in turnover in 2014 to €1.168 billion in 2022, the sector fell to €704 million in 2024, partly due to competitive pressure from extra-EU products that are not always compliant with European regulations.
This is an important point because it demonstrates that the transition cannot be consolidated through regulation alone.
Traceability, controls, clear technical definitions, harmonized criteria, and a market capable of recognizing the industrial value of innovation are equally necessary. Otherwise, the risk is that the most advanced investments will be penalized precisely when they should instead be supported and enhanced.
Today, the Issue Is First and Foremost Industrial
The point, therefore, is not to oppose plastics and sustainability, as often happens in oversimplified public debate.
The real issue is whether Europe — and with it Italy — still intends to maintain industrial leadership in a supply chain that remains strategic for manufacturing, material innovation, and the development of recycling and circularity technologies.
In this sense, sustainability cannot be viewed merely as a regulatory constraint. It becomes a credible industrial objective only when accompanied by conditions that make investment, innovation, and competitive production possible.
This is precisely the challenge highlighted both by Plastics Europe data and the TEHA report: Europe’s loss of production share, company closures, job erosion, and worsening trade balance all show that competitiveness is already a concrete and measurable issue.
The Italian plastics industry starts from far from marginal foundations. It maintains a strong position in transformation processes, demonstrates solid manufacturing capacity, and preserves specialized technical expertise that represents a significant industrial asset.
For this reason, what is at stake is not simply adaptation to new environmental obligations, but the possibility of transforming the transition into a lever for industrial consolidation rather than an additional factor of competitive pressure.
The future of the sector will therefore depend on the ability to realign three dimensions that currently move at different speeds:
regulations, which must guide the transition without multiplying uncertainty and fragmentation;
energy, which remains a decisive factor for the economic sustainability of investments;
industrial capital, both public and private, necessary to support plants, innovation, and market development for secondary raw materials.
The balance between these elements will determine, over the coming years, not only the competitiveness of the Italian plastics industry, but also the credibility of a European industrial policy capable of combining decarbonization, circularity, and industrial production.
Note
i Plastics Europe, Plastics the Fast Facts 2025.
ii TEHA Group, L’industria della plastica in Italia. Strategia e linee d’azione per supportare competitività e circolarità, luglio 2025.
iii These are the main European regulatory and parafiscal instruments currently affecting the plastics supply chain: some regulate substances and products (REACH, ESPR, SUP), others govern waste management and producer responsibility (Waste Framework Directive), while others introduce a cost linked to the share of non-recycled plastic waste (Plastics Own Resource). (Editor’s note)
