New Pollution Laws in China Will Raise Prices of Vinyl Gloves and Cause A Shortage

March 27th, 2018

As China’s pollution levels hit an all-time high.....................................

 

Today’s blog is by Ashley Riviello, Account Manager at SafeSourcing.

As China’s pollution levels hit an all-time high, factories are being forced to shut down throughout Northern China. China has depended very heavily on coal to make itself the second-largest economy in the world, United States being number one. With the new pollution laws in China, how is this going to affect our vinyl glove cost and market?

The shortage of vinyl gloves will have a huge impact on the world. China is a major producer of vinyl used in latex-free gloves and in January of 2017, a production ban was imposed on vinyl glove factories due to record levels of air pollution. Vinyl has spiked in price by more than 55 percent in the past few months, from $946 per ton in September 2017 to $1,500 per ton today. That is a huge change. With a minimum of 170 production lines shut down in one area alone, this equals to around 1.7 million cases of disposable gloves. Longterm, all suppliers of vinyl gloves will be affected. Not only will there be a significant price change in the gloves, there will most likely be a shortage due to production being down. Anyone in the food, medical or surgical markets will be highly affected. Some companies have already started thinking of alternatives for vinyl gloves, such as a higher quality disposable nitrile glove or the octoglove which is a better quality than vinyl at half the price.

As we see the increase in price for vinyl gloves, and the shortage of supply, we will definitely be seeing a huge incline in new and alternative gloves for food and medical markets, most of which will be better quality at a cheaper price. Working with suppliers on a daily basis I would love to see this change and start saving people money, because that’s what SafeSourcing does.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can help your procurement efforts, or on our Risk Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service representative. We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

 

 

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