Resin pricing dominated top headlines of 2021

The results are in, and Plastics News readers were overwhelmingly interested in one topic in 2021: resin pricing.

That's a big change from 2020, when COVID-19 dominated my list of the most popular headlines on PlasticsNews.com. COVID stories finished well down the list this year.

This is my annual blog post listing our most popular Plastics News stories, measured by web traffic. Most years, the top stories fit into one of four categories: M&A news, resin pricing, big scoops or safety-related stories.

But 2021 is a year that broke the mold. Supply chain issues were big news, and plastic resin shortages and skyrocketing prices were second only to computer chips in generating the most attention in the mainstream press.

Cream cheese was a distant runner-up. But look on the bright side: a least we have plenty of toilet paper this year.

Most years I share all the top stories. But this year, I'm taking a few liberties with the list, for the sake of variety. Take my word for it, if I gave you a true Top 10 list this year, every single one would be about resin pricing.

Frank Esposito was a busy guy this year, and we always had plenty to talk about, and big audiences, for our monthly Polymer Points Live webinars.

So, from the home office in Belleville, Mich., here are the Plastics News Top 10 stories of 2021, plus a mini-ranking of our most popular blogs:

Emily Tipaldo, executive director of the U.S. Plastics Pact, explained to our Steve Toloken — and the Plastics News Executive Forum audience — how meeting aggressive recycling goals will require major changes in packaging design and recycling.

This story is still timely: Watch in the coming weeks for the Pact to publish its list of "problematic or unnecessary" packaging that member companies aim to phase out by 2025.

A sad footnote to the career of Plastics Hall of Famer Robert Schad: Injection press maker Niigon Machines Ltd. filed for bankruptcy and all of its employees were immediately terminated. The company had C$113.4 million (US$90.1 million) in liabilities and only C$5.2 million (US$4.1 million) in assets.

This was a scoop for Catherine Kavanaugh, and her story included a detail that no other media has reported: that Niigon closed after a failed effort to sell the company to Stans, Switzerland-based Benpac Holding AG.

I highly recommend Kavanaugh's two follow-up stories on Niigon for more details: Niigon creditors likely out C$105M in bankruptcy filing and Niigon, in bankruptcy, evicts Amsler from leased facility.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who in the past has allied with the plastics industry on the Save Our Seas laws, introduced legislation Aug. 6 that would tax virgin plastic sold into single-use products as a way to make recycled resin more cost-competitive.

As Steve Toloken has reported since, Whitehouse's proposal was initially part of legislation called the Rewarding Efforts to Decrease Unrecycled Contaminants in Ecosystems Act. Later, it was part of President Joe Biden's Build Back Better proposal, which as of this writing still has not received vote in the U.S. Senate.

But even if BBB fails, as is now widely expected, don't be surprised if the virgin resin tax proposal resurfaces in 2022.

Jabil Inc. is a major force in medical molding, dating back to the days when its molding business was known as Nypro Inc. Stories about Jabil generate a lot of reader interest.

Another Jabil story this year, also by Sarah Kominek, generated heavy traffic: Jabil investing $57M on new NC injection molding facility.

It's also noteworthy that Gordon Lankton, a plastics industry giant who headed Nypro for 50 years, died in 2021. Here's his obituary, and a column on his impact on the industry.

After more than a year of increases, prices for polyethylene and polypropylene resins were expected to trend downward. Market analysts Nick Vafiadis and Joel Morales of IHS Markit gave their outlooks for PE and PP markets Oct. 27 as part of the online Global Plastics Summit 2021.

As an aside, we noticed that quite a few of the mainstream business press stories about high resin prices came out after many prices actually started to come down.

In another example of a legislative story that we expect to hear more about in 2022, Maine and Oregon this summer passed the first comprehensive laws in the U.S. requiring companies to directly pay for the recycling of plastics, paper and other packaging.

As Steve Toloken explained, industry groups argued that the plans were too expensive, but supporters argued that municipalities needed relief from the rising costs of recycling, and that it was unfair to stick taxpayers with the bill.

Resin was in short supply and processors were already feeling the pain. Not to mention resin compounders and distributors. One executive who Frank Esposito quoted said he expected shortages and "significant price inflation" to continue and to be felt across the value chain.

That's a prediction that turned out to be on the money.

This was a breaking news story on the winter storm that brought the U.S. resin sector to its knees in February.

Looking back it the story now, Frank Esposito had an incredible amount of detail on what was still an unfolding story, with force majeure declarations, plant shutdowns and expert analysis on what the issue would mean to an already tight resin market.

Winter Storm Uri, which hit Texas in mid-February, affected the production of almost every resin and feedstock made on the Texas Gulf Coast. Market sources told Frank Esposito that resin supplies would stay tight through the first half of 2021.

Spoiler alert: they were right.

Frank Esposito's January Polymer Points column, explaining the huge price hikes for commodity resins, was our top story of 2021. And if readers knew at the time what was coming a month later with the Texas freeze … well, who could have predicted that.

That really is an abridged version of all of our top resin stories of 2021, I could have included many more that would have made our list of top stories.

Our blogs get a lot of traffic too, so here is a list of our three most popular blog posts on PlasticsNews.com in 2021. All three would have also made our top list of top stories, and they do not even include Rhoda Miel's popular Kickstart blogs, which don't get as many page views since readers get the entire text in their morning Kickstart email:

No. 3: The complex world of resin pricing is in the middle of CDI-ICIS deal.

No. 2: How long will it take for EVs to replace internal combustion engines?

No. 1: Plastics doesn't have a recycling problem, it has an image problem

Thank you to all of our local readers for another great year of covering plastics industry news.