Knowledge is power when negotiating resin prices

By Karen Hanna 

In good times or bad, it’s easy to overpay for resin. Times like these just underscore that threat. But according to experts from Resin Technology Inc. (RTi) Global, a new tool called resinsmart.ai, which tracks resin prices, can help provide more certainty and leverage in negotiations.  

In a recent webinar touting the platform, Tyler Wheeler, senior business unit leader for engineered resins for RTi subsidiary ResinSmart and other speakers urged buyers to do their research, build their network and look beyond the resins they currently buy. 

An industry veteran who worked for a major processor before coming to RTi, Wheeler acknowledged that he knows from experience the cost of negotiating without sufficient data — he’s celebrated price cuts that he realized later still left his company paying more than competitors.  

He recalled trying to negotiate a better deal for a company that for years had purchased PC without closely examining the price.  

“I thought, ‘Oh, well, this is low-hanging fruit. I'll go shake them down for I thought, well, looking ambitious here, ‘Let's call it 10 cents.’ So, I shook them down for 10 cents, we [saved] 20 grand,” he said. 

That felt like a win — until the company put out a formal request for proposal (RFP) that revealed he should have been asking for a discount of several more dimes per pound.  

“I left 30 cents on the table when I negotiated this, because I didn't really have any reference. So, that one additional data point showed me, ‘Hey, we all were popping champagne over 10 cents. It should have been 40 or 50,’ ” Wheeler said.  

But that wasn’t all. 

After that experience, Wheeler said he came to RTi, where he had access to data that showed the true price shouldn’t have been $1.80 (around what Wheeler had negotiated) or $1.50 (what the RFPs revealed) but closer to $1.15.  

He conceded the experience was “humbling,” with each new price revelation leading to “even further embarrassment.” 

Peeking behind the curtain on resin pricing

Opaque resin prices put buyers in a tough spot.  

“It's beyond me that today, 40 years later, since I started my career, that you can go to the internet right now and find out what orange juice and propane and oil and pork bellies, all these commodities, you can find exactly what the transparent price is. But, yet, today, in 2026, you’ve still got to rely on an index,” said Bill Bowie, the founder of ResinSmart. 

In some cases, at smaller shops, managers might be buying paper products in the morning, then attempting to negotiate resin in the afternoon with a salesperson armed with the knowledge of hundreds of other deals, Bowie said. 

Indexed-pricing contracts can allow sellers to enjoy price increases without accounting fully for drops that might occur as the market adjusts, he and Wheeler said.  

“Everybody's got a letter telling you it's going up. Everything is showing it's going up. But who sends a letter to say we dropped 6 cents last week?” Bowie asked. 

Research and data can help buyers establish some level of control.  

Available through RTi, the new resinsmart.ai platform provides real-time prices for resins and feedstocks, with breakdowns by material grade and analysis of the opportunity for negotiation. 

“We have a whole database of resins that are already cost-modeled, and that's growing every day. But when you're able to take that cost model and then add on the ResinSmart feedstocks and the ResinSmart fair-market prices and all the stuff that we already offer our commodity clients, that's how you can get a live, ongoing opportunity analysis. You can identify drift as it's happening,” Wheeler said. 

With its tools, RTi has been able to save money for buyers of billions of pounds of resins, said Michael Workman, director of growth for ResinSmart. In one instance, for example, he said, his company achieved a 23 percent price cut, for multi-million-dollar savings for that year. 

But without additional help, resin buyers are disadvantaged, he said. He cautioned that even when they feel they’re doing as much as they can to negotiate good prices, buyers can get burned. 

“The resin market is stacked against you as a resin buyer. If you're buying the way you did 5, 10, 20 years ago, you're leaving money on the table,” he warned. 

To illustrate the impact of data, Bowie recounted working with officials at a company who thought they were being treated as if they were much higher-volume customers. While they bought about 28 million pounds of resin a year, they boasted they were getting the prices of a 100-million-pound customer.  

But that wasn’t true.  

“The first meeting we sat in, we gave them the notes to understand the data, what they needed to say in that meeting,” Bowie said. “We never said a word, and they dropped their price 12 cents a pound on 28 million pounds” — a savings of more than $3.3 million. 

He urged resin buyers to ask plenty of questions around pricing. 

Using data to your advantage

As the stories he and Wheeler told highlighted, complacency or assumptions can prove expensive.  

Every data point can provide leverage.  

“Now, you might be buying medical low-density, but what's wrong with calling the brokers that are selling generic prime low-density?” Bowie asked.  

He also urged the importance of relationships with resin sellers — as well as the potential benefits of simply throwing them for a loop.  

“We used to use the strategy of pattern interrupt. Your resin supplier comes in the same Tuesday every month, talk about what you're going to buy, talk about the market, takes you to lunch. Hey, how about this time say, ‘Hey, the CFO would like to talk to you. He hasn't seen you in a few months. He'd like to know what's going on in the resin market. Hey, I'll buy lunch,’ ” he said. “Just little things to change the dynamic of that relationship and what's going on.” 

Buyers also can benefit from expanding their supply base, by considering resins of a different grade they currently use and exploring whether such grades might work. 

Wheeler said resin buyers could consider, “When was the last time we qualified an alternate?”  

He called gathering intelligence on less-expensive or lower-tier resins “kind of a gangster move.” 

He advised, for example, that buyers of medical-grade material call their suppliers and ask how much a generic prime version would cost, with the premise that they’re planning to start a new project. 

“And then tell them, whatever that medical grade you're buying is … you're interested for your new product launch [in] generic prime. For that, you're going to get a price. Now, that price may not be the market price and what you deserve, but that price is going to tell you two things: It's going to tell you what that supplier thinks they can get, and it's going to set you a new baseline for whatever you're paying now.” 

He expressed some skepticism about the basis for some prices, saying, “Tell me what's so special about this medical grade. Is there gold flakes in it? Do you hand-stretch it?” 

Amid the Iran war, which has sent prices soaring, he and his colleagues said companies shouldn’t accept the latest hikes without negotiation — nor, as his story shows, should they celebrate too early if they get a discount.  

“A lot of people are in reactionary mode, and they're seeing the price nominations, which, again, I think this is an important time to reiterate that price increase letter is a nomination. It's a start of a conversation,” Workman said. 

According to him and the other speakers, that conversation will go better with data.