Please provide an overview of the industry’s performance over the past year?

2021 was a year of recovery, with spectacular growth rates above 15% in real terms, and record performance for many chemical players. Then, 2022 was a correction year. We started to see the economy balancing out, the slowdown becoming obvious in the second semester, compounded by high inflation and logistics challenges. In 2022, chemical products grew at 17.4%, plastics at 8.2% and rubber at 17.5%. This year, we are seeing negative numbers in some sectors, but this is a natural adjustment, reflecting the contraction in demand. In the first quarter of this year, chemical products were growing at 4.1%, while plastics dropped to -8.6%, and basic chemicals to -18.5%. Normally, this is a steady sector growing at around 4-5% yearly, but the last three years were very different. Could you give us an idea of the size of the chemical industry in Colombia?

Acoplásticos does not represent the entire chemical sector, only the plastics value chain, including paints and coatings, rubber, and some basic chemicals associated with petrochemicals, and excluding agrochemicals, cosmetics, cleaning products, etc. We can estimate the chemical sector at close to 1.5% of the country’s GDP. The total revenue of our sector is approximately US$6 billion, of which US$2 billion come from exports. If we go into more detail, 50% of all plastic materials (PP, PVC, PS, etc.) are exported, while only about 10-15% of plastic products are exported, which gives us an average of 30%. Could you comment on the recent legislations passed on single-use plastics?

Congress passed two major acts related to single-use plastics. The first is a ban on single-use plastics that comes after many years of debates. “Ban” sounds alarming, but it does come with many exceptions, including on bags, cutlery, disposables, or straws, as well as products that meet certain circularity conditions. The second regulation is a tax on single-use plastics that extends to packaging, which represents about 52% of the plastics market. For this reason, it has a much greater impact. Although this tax is like what we find in Spain, Italy, or the UK, and has a similar rate of around 20%, the big difference in Colombia is that it does allow many exceptions: for example, vital products using plastic packaging like foods, beverages, health products, hygiene products, cosmetics, as well as products that represent an HSE risk, are all exempted from the tax.

If, after a lifecycle analysis, it can be proven that the substitutes for those plastic materials have a worse environmental impact, then both the ban and the tax do not apply. The Colombian government is also developing a circular economy certificate that, once granted, exempts companies from paying the tax. Could you share some initiatives that Acoplásticos is driving in terms of skills development?

The first is our collaboration with SENA, the government agency in charge of technical capacity building. Every year, SENA chooses different projects to develop large-scale and sector-oriented training initiatives, and this year we won one. As part of this project, we have a training program made of eight large modules and 34 workshops, both virtual and in-person, covering training on plastic processes like extrusion or blow molding, as well as Industry 4.0, robotics, IoT, and so on. This project should benefit 1,500 workers in the plastics industry and more than 50 companies. While the project with SENA focuses on what we can do right now, we are also starting a different project with the Inter-American Development Bank that looks at a sectorial skills-building strategy for the future and what capacity will we require in the next decades. What are the priorities at Acoplásticos for this year?

Our goal is to have more clarity on the legal processes for the implementation of the plastics tax. In addition, we have various projects ongoing, besides the ones mentioned, including a flagship project with the Alliance to End Plastic Waste on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, and a joint initiative with UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), looking at recycling opportunities to reintegrate ex-guerrilla groups in areas of the country that have been highly affected by violence. We also have a campaign to promote more home painting, because Colombia has a much lower paint per capita use compared to other countries.