You may have recently been told that the price of your plastic products will be increased.

Prices for plastic products are expected to
rise by up to 10 percent in February 2013

Why, you ask?

Well, according to Frank Esposito a senior reporter at Plastics News, the end user price increase is a ripple effect caused by outages at manufacturing plants in and along the Gulf Coast.

Planned and unplanned outages throughout 2012 led to a 200 million pound decrease in polypropylene and propylene monomer manufacturing.

The decrease in available product has created higher demand, leading to a scheduled price increase of up to 10 percent effective Feb. 1, 2013.

The bad news is, we can’t do anything about the impending increase.

The worse news is, the February increase may not be the last that we see.

Many companies are trying to stock up on their plastic consumables, such as bags and stretch film, before the Feb. 1 increase.

While this is a good strategy for the short term, it will ultimately lead to even lower supply and higher demand – which will lead to even higher prices.

So what can a company do to bring costs down?

The best advice that we can offer is to contact your packaging specialist. Product specialists, like ones at United Packaging, can help your company evaluate the products your are currently using and help you create a plan to either:

  • Change products
  • Economize your usage of your existing products
  • Eliminate unnecessary usage/products

For more information about polypropylene and propylene monomer products or the impending price increase, contact a United Packaging product specialist at 1-888-633-0700, by emailing:sales.dept@unitedpkg.com or visit www.UnitedPkg.com.