Frank Esposito
Plastics News
August 17, 2021

If resin distributors had theme songs, their selection for 2021 might be the Rolling Stones hit “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”

That’s been the case for availability of resin as well as for challenges in logistics, labor, packaging, shipping, rail and trucking since early 2020. The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic were followed by hurricanes in the second half of 2020 and an unexpected ice storm that hit Texas in February.

(A backup song selection might be the Joe Jackson hit “You Can’t Get What You Want (Till You Know What You Want).” But that might not apply, since distributors already know what they want.)

These tight supply conditions have been accompanied by surging demand from many plastics end markets as global economies recovered. The major supply/demand imbalance has made life challenging for resin distributors, who could sell more resin if they could only get more resin.

Plastics News recently checked in with executives at several resin distribution firms to see how they were handling the challenges of 2021.
Here’s what they had to say:

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