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胶粘剂原材料的价格不会降回来了吗？

来源：林中祥胶粘剂技术信息网2011年04月27日

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Will adhesive raw material prices ever come back down?

In its Global Energy Outlook 2010, the International Energy Agency predicts that crude oil will never again be produced at the record output of 70 million barrels per day set in 2006.¹ Demand will continue to rise, however. With most adhesive raw materials being petrochemically-derived, can the industry look forward to only rising prices? Or will natural feedstocks come to the rescue?

Historically price fluctuations for adhesive raw materials were directly affected by price changes in petrochemical and energy.² If that were still true, with Brent Crude nearing $120/barrel as I write, then the consequences for adhesive raw materials would be clear. Yet, with oil prices normally closely linked to economic growth and fears of a double-dip recession still very strong, perhaps there could soon be hope for a reduction in raw material costs.

Figure 1: Changes in supply (black/grey line) demand (gold line) and inventory levels (red/pink/brown line) of adhesive raw materials from 2008-2010

However, seemingly market dynamics have changed so that petrochemical price volatility alone is no longer the main driver of adhesive raw material prices. Instead, with most adhesive raw materials now relatively scarce and many raw material elements on allocation, its supply thats driving prices more than underlying feedstock cost.

Having ridden out a series of outages beginning in late 2009, acrylate adhesive formulators are now facing continued tight supplies due to upstream feedstock issues. Prices of propylene, the feedstock for both acrylic acid and alcohols that combine to produce acrylic monomers like butyl acrylate (BA) and 2-ethylhexacrylate INSERT INTO [lzx].[dbo].[tb_new]([id],[type],[title],[source],[personal],[image],[contents],[time],[number]) VALUES (2-EHA) spiked in January. Planned and unplanned outages recently worsened the tight supply of n-butanol and 2-ethylhexanol. Prices of BA and 2-EHA both rose around 10 percent at the beginning of the year, after growing up to 90 percent in 2010. In hot melt adhesive materials, tackifier supplies remain restricted, and US refiners are still shifting to lighter cracking slates, raising prices of the butadiene monomers used in styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS) backbone polymers. There too, prices are steadily rising with SBS, for example, expected to increase 5 percent each quarter in 2011.

Figure 2: Upstream supply issues have raised prices of feedstocks for adhesive raw materials.

Faced with this kind of situation, a shift to using more directly biologically-derived chemical feedstocks seems only logical. Already, on an overall raw materials basis, such chemicals account for about 30 percent of all components used in adhesive formulations.⁴ Through to 2017, market analysts expect natural adhesives to grow slightly faster than the overall adhesive market, which is expected to conform to regional increases in gross domestic product (GDP).

Figure 3: Prices of raw materials used in hot melt adhesives continue to grow strongly

But when you look in detail at the status of natural raw materials, its clear that this sector is also facing challenges. For example, in 2010, prices of natural rubber latex used in elastomeric adhesives exceeded previous highs set in 2008 as steady demand growth combined with poor weather in rubber producing regions. Prices increased over 50 percent during the year, and have gained an additional 20 percent in 2011. This also has the effect of forcing tyre producers away from natural rubber towards block copolymers often used in adhesives, raising prices further there. \r