The profile extrusion sector covered in the report primarily relates to the manufacture of rigid profiles for the production of window, door and conservatory frames. However, there are also a variety of other products that can be manufactured by this process including shutters, cladding, furniture and automotive components, ducting, curtain tracks and a variety of other miscellaneous consumer, industrial and building products. As such it is primarily a sub-market of the PVC industry and AMI estimates that over 90 % of production is in PVC. The remainder of the market is mainly accounted for by PE materials with some small volumes of PP, PS, TPEs and engineering plastics.

The report covers producers of both rigid and flexible profiles. Rigid profiles: mainly based on unplasticised PVC are primarily used in building applications and include window frames, door frames, sills, barge boards, cladding, shutters and blinds, skirting boards and cable trays. Flexible profiles: mainly based on plasticised PVC, polyolefins or thermoplastic elastomers, are offered for a wide range of small trim and sealing applications mostly to specifications determined by the end user in automotive, domestic appliance and other related end use markets.

The largest share of the market is accounted for by the manufacture of window and building profiles. Around 65 % of production is for these type of products. The AMI database includes the details of the European production sites for the leading building profile producing groups such as Profine, Veka, Rehau, Alphacan, Deceuninck and the Tessenderlo Group.

Germany is by far the most important market for the production of profiles. It accounts for nearly half of the market in polymer demand terms. Italy has the next largest number of profile extruding companies, although the production of profiles in Italy is relatively unusual in that it is applications other than window frames which represent the largest share of polymer consumption, mainly in the form of profiles for blinds, doors and shutters.