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At press time in mid-October, the impact of Hurricane Ike on Gulf Coast refineries and resin plants was still being assessed.

Commodity resin prices were still rising last month, and still more hikes were pending, but market resistance was building.

Coextrusion is on the increase in tubing for medical uses, with more layers, more exotic materials, and much thinner walls. These require unprecedented levels of dimensional accuracy and flaw detection.

The athletes in Beijing aren’t the only ones taking record leaps this summer.

Prices of all sorts of commodity and engineering thermoplastics and thermosets are rising by leaps and bounds, reacting to equally strong increases in feedstock costs. PE PRICES UP SHARPLYPE prices moved up 3¢/lb in May, after a 3¢ increase in April.

Commodity resin producers keep pushing for price increases, but their success is limited by weak market demand and soft prices of many monomers.

In polyolefins and PET, resin suppliers recently announced price increases at the same time that prices were actually falling, thanks to softer feedstock pricing and weakness in both domestic and overseas demand. Industry analysts don’t expect prices to move much in either direction right now.

Although a number of resins saw price increases in January, weak domestic markets hurt suppliers’ prospects to implement hikes in February and March.

Commodity resin prices are moving upward, slowly and mainly in small steps, owing to market resistance to the much larger increases announced by resin suppliers.

Rising monomer prices and strong export demand helped lift prices of all commodity resins as well as some engineering, thermoset, and foam materials. PE prices upPolyethylene prices moved up last month as suppliers pushed to implement Nov. 1 increases of 5¢/lb.