The Freedonia Group, the US market research company, has published a report which predicts that world flat glass demand is likely to grow by more than 4%/year to reach almost four billion square metres in 2004, with a market value of more than US$40bn. The study, published in January this year, forecasts that the requirement for raw flat glass will reach 39.2m metric tons in 2004. Based on this prediction, and assuming an industry-wide usage rate of around 85%, the global industry will require about 14,000 metric tonnes/day of new float glass capacity from the installed base at year end 1999 to meet market demands through to the end of 2004. This positive demand seems to be reflected by the number of newly built and currently planned glass plants.
