I'm pleased to announce some new improvements to our resin pricing section, both online and in print.
First, the print change: For many years, we picked two grades each week to highlight with graphics showing historic trend lines. We did that to highlight our years of pricing data, which otherwise wouldn't be obvious to print readers. But we know from talking to our readers that the prices we publish are not as important as the amount of the increases and decreases. Starting today, our graphics highlight the changes in cents per pound instead of prices. (The prices are all still on the chart, of course.)
That makes the data that readers care about more obvious, plus it removes the confusing nonmarket corrections from the graphics.
If you need graphics showing the actual prices, including nonmarket corrections, then of course you can still get those online, with the added benefit of links to stories explaining each change.
In print, we'll publish graphics on our most-viewed resins: high density polyethylene, PET bottle resin, polypropylene and suspension-grade PVC.
Online, you can get price histories for any of the materials on our chart, many going back to 1989.
The other change I'm highlighting today is online only. When we recently redesigned our pricing section, I teased that we also planned to add a whole new section: Western European polymer prices. That section is now live, and it includes both current and historical prices for virgin thermoplastics and post-consumer resins, reported by David Platt from our sister magazine Sustainable Plastics. Like the North American prices, the chart links to stories explaining all of the changes.
Our pricing section online includes a lot more than resin prices. It also features all of our pricing news and Material Insights videos, plus Frank Esposito's monthly Polymer Points columns and Polymer Points Live editorial livestreams. We've also got FAQs about pricing and a column explaining how we cover pricing.
I'm excited about these new changes. Let me know what you think.
Don Loepp is editor of Plastics News.