Letter 11967

Chemical Prices 

Anyone know where we can look to find current market prices for bulk chemicals such as sulfuric and caustic. Are there any listings like there would be for oil, gas and pork bellys?

Jeff Pernick
- Detroit, MI

There is a weekly paper, The Chemical Marketing Reporter which lists the bulk pricing of hundreds of industrial chemicals. Unfortunately I no longer have contact information for them.

Gene Packman
process supplier - Great Neck, New York

Good luck! One would think that this type of information would be readiliy available, but it isn't. You have to sign up and PAY to get access to that type of information. Rates can run as little as $150/yr to into the thousands. www.chemweek.com is a decent site that cost about $160/yr to subscribe to, and you will have access to market pricing of commodity inorganic chemicals such as acids and bases. However, you should be aware that these prices usually have absolutely NO bearing on what you are likely to pay for chemicals in your own facility. These prices are bulk (per ton or other units) from the manufacturers of the chemicals themselves, and they usually go throught several hands before they get to the end-users. Your prices are based on tankage lease rates, bulk transporations costs, number of middlemen profit margins, and repackaging costs.

A primary difference here is that commodity chemicals, unlike gold or pork bellies, and such, are usually not traded, although there is a huge futures market that exists for these. One difference between them however is that it takes 4-6 months to grow wheat or raise a pig - it takes a day to make a kilo-ton of cuastic at most plants.

Tom Baker       wastewater treatment specialist Warminster, Pennsylvania

The Chemical Market Reporter can be reached and subscribed to at www.chemexpo.com

Richard Charm
- Danville, CA, USA

If you are searching for a crude estimate of bulk chemical prices for a uni project or similar, like I was. I suggest ed.icheme.org/costchem.html , albeit rather a short list and a year out of date but it had most of the chemicals i required.

Stuart Alexander Ghee
- Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland

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