Why Polymer prices are sky rocketing & what does the future hold

Polymer prices graph.jpg

As a business heavily involved in the supply of a range of printable plastics Nu Agencies, like many of our customers, have been trying to make sense of what is driving the dramatic increases in resin costs seen over the last two months, which in turn are fuelling increased prices for finished film. Increases that are presenting many flexible food packaging manufacturers with some tough challenges.

Whilst fortunately we are able to source our materials from a diverse range of suppliers around the globe, we understand the hardships these price rises are causing and the associated supply problems, so like many people in the industry we have been looking for background information and trying to get view of how long this situation is likely to continue.

Please find below a couple of articles that we found useful to help us make sense of what is happening and as importantly what the future price and availability situation looks like.

We are, of course, happy to speak to anyone who is looking for alternative sources of supply.

Plastics Exchange Article

Plastics Today Article

What does the future hold?

If you have read these articles then clearly some of the unique factors that have created the drop in resin supply and rise in prices are now behind us, but it will take several weeks for production to resume and supply volumes to normalise. We’ve reached out to three of our suppliers this week on three different continents and each of them are saying they expect the inflated film price situation to continue for a minimum of two months. However each of them also has a watchful eye on the price of oil, which has once again started to creep up. If that trend continues then perhaps the return to 2019 price levels will take longer than the currently predicted two months.