Material Insights: Dec. 5, 2011

Another sizable drop in North American polypropylene resin pricing is featured in this week's Material Insights video. Regional PP prices fell an average of six cents per pound in November after slipping 14 cents in October. Prices rocketed up 37 cents per pound in the first five months of 2011, only to fall 40 cents since then for a net loss of 3 cents. Buyers cited lower prices for propylene monomer and weak resin demand as reasons for the most recent slide. The sentencing of a former sales rep for materials firm PolyOne also is featured in this week's video. Lubos Arnold worked for PolyOne as a sales rep in the Czech Republic. He embezzled more than $2 million from a company bank account there over a two-year period. He was sentenced to two and a half years in jail in U.S. District Court in Akron, Ohio. The video wraps up with big growth predictions for the bioplastics market. Global demand for those materials is expected to triple by 2015, reaching more than two billion pounds of product valued at almost $3 billion, according to a new report from research firm Freedonia Group of Cleveland.