>>6285290>presumably cheaper plastic costsChemical based material prices are hand in hand with the price of crude (because source material for everything that isn't shit quality or even more expensive than polycarbon based).
Plastic has been steadily rising in price for years now due to oil prices. See graph, it's the producer price index (raw material price per unit) for commodity rubber and plastic products averaged as a whole. (excuse quality just looking at freely available data). The peak you see was when gas was nearing $5 a gal at the pump and has dropped since but overall it's still high and will only continue to climb as overall volatility continues.
2011 was the historic high and from a producer standpoint raw materiel orders are made months if not years ahead of actually being needed so price paid by them is done on cost projections done way in advance. I would wager the material sellers have not dropped prices much at all in fear of price going high again leaving them losing on profit or outright taking losses.
While numbers from china are unreliable as shit their supplier reports corroborate price increases expected year after year since 2010 at least.
Does this explain why GSC are jewing everyone? Not entirely no, but I just wanted to point out that plastics (pvc style plastics anyway) are not in any way shape or form getting cheaper as time goes on. In fact it's the opposite and following the trend will only get worse unless alternative materials get better and cheaper in coming years.
t. econ nerd.
