As the war with Iran closes out its 11th week, the threats to businesses no longer are theoretical — especially for plastics sectors, including packaging. Higher plastic prices and supply struggles are evident, and experts warn the situation is on the verge of worsening barring a prompt conflict resolution. Regardless of when the war ends, the current impacts to the plastic packaging industry are expected to linger at least for the remainder of the year.
Commodity intelligence service ICIS has reported since March that the Iran war is contributing to a spike in plastic prices, notably for polyethylene and polypropylene. Prior to the war, polymer demand was soft amid a global oversupply of those two resins, and polyolefin producers' margins had been declining for a couple of years.
"We were getting close to the bottom of the cycle for those raw materials," meaning producers were at or near the point of rationalizing excess capacity to broaden their margins, said Esteban Sagel, principal and CEO at Chemical and Polymer Market Consultants.
The war quickly resulted in tighter supplies for virgin resins amid production disturbances, along with higher prices globally for both virgin and recycled grades, said Andrea Bassetti, Americas team lead for plastics recycling at ICIS.
Asian markets in particular, but also European markets, are much more strongly affected than the United States, "simply because both of those markets' supply chains are a lot more exposed to what's going on in the conflict versus the United States," Bassetti said. "A big part of that is, where does [the United States’] energy come from? A lot of it comes from ethane and shale gas, and not only crude oil."
That said, the effects from both global and domestic material supply challenges and cost increases are flowing down to North American converters of both plastic flexible and rigid packaging. This is highlighted in a newly released white paper from Berlin Packaging that raised alarms about the conflict "rewiring global packaging supply chains."
"The supply chains aren't nimble. There's going to be long-standing ramifications."
Jonathan Quinn
CEO of EGC Consulting
During a May 11 interview with CNN, Emerald Packaging CEO Kevin Kelly said the flexible packaging company has raised prices about 8% because of input cost increases — its largest ever monthly increase. Although customers aren’t happy, they expected this and understand this isn’t an isolated incident, Kelly told Packaging Dive via email.
“We’re living a nightmare of rising energy costs, supply chain disruption, and material shortages thanks to the conflict with Iran. Resin prices have already surged 115%,” Kelly said. If the conflict intensifies again, “we would see cost increases that make the ones we’ve seen so far look puny.”
Silgan, which has a dispensing and specialty closures unit that uses plastics, expects that segment to experience a $50 million incremental cost impact in the second quarter from conflict fallout, resulting in a $10 million hit to adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
"The rapid, kind of unprecedented inflation that we've seen in resin is specifically what we're talking about," said CEO Adam Greenlee during the company's April 29 earnings call.
Greif CEO Ole Rosgaard noted during an April 29 earnings call that the war has caused “direct impacts to our business." Greif has multiple facilities in the region, and the company leaned into polymers during a business segment restructuring 18 months ago.
Amcor doesn't have operations in the Middle East, and less than 5% of its resins are sourced from the region, confirmed CEO Peter Konieczny during a May 6 earnings call. If necessary, the company can raise prices for certain customers and pass through costs for its roughly 70% of contracted business.
Clearly, the question now isn't whether the conflict in the Middle East is affecting U.S. plastic packaging companies. It's a matter of how long and deep the effects will cut.
"The unprecedented price increases, particularly on polyethylene, are going to have lasting implications," said Jonathan Quinn, CEO of EGC Consulting. "It has a waterfall effect. There's not a way to just peel this back."
The timing of renormalization depends both on when the conflict ends and how long it takes for mitigation actions to work through various supply chains. Overall, experts say the war's end won't be like flipping off a switch for business shocks.
"I think the most important thing to remember in all of this is that the supply chains aren't nimble," Quinn said. "There's going to be long-standing ramifications, and it's going to create turbulence in the marketplace for a long time."
Petro and plastic problems
The plastic supply chain problem stems in part from the considerable share of global polymer production that occurs in the Middle East. The region is the top global PE exporter, accounting for about 40% last year. Bombings have damaged a significant amount of the region’s petrochemical infrastructure, and petroleum-derived naphtha is a key polyolefin feedstock — including for polymer grades used in packaging.
In addition, the war is driving higher fuel and transportation costs, which ultimately hit material producers' and packaging companies' bottom lines. Global petrochemical and polyolefin movement has been stunted because a large proportion of those materials ship through the Strait of Hormuz — which has only seen a trickle of ships pass through since the war started Feb. 28.
Some observers are pointing to impending plastic and packaging shortages in Asia, the region experts say has been hardest hit. But in North America, the second-largest global PE exporter, "our cost to manufacture polyolefins — polyethylene, in particular — is linked to the cost of ethane, a natural gas component that has not increased in price like those oil-related products in the Middle East and in Asia," Sagel said.
That doesn't mean North American polymer production is immune to war impacts. Supply disruptions globally have spurred greater demand for North American PE exports, Sagel said. And within North America, polyolefin demand jumped in March “because converters got concerned about potential price increases. They got ahead of those, and rapidly increased domestic demand," he said.
Alongside escalating demand, North American plastics producers have announced polyolefin price increases. That's the case for LyondellBasell, co-headquartered in Houston and London, which declared a series of PE price increases since March as demand sharply rose. This mirrors other domestic producers' increases, including at Michigan-based Dow.
"We anticipate that shutdowns, feedstock limitations and logistical constraints will continue to reshape polyethylene product availability across [global] regions," said Dow Chief Operating Officer Karen Carter during the company's April 23 earnings call. "Supply and feedstocks into Asia and Europe are constrained, which is triggering price increases globally. It is also leading to increased production in the Americas and is providing Dow the opportunity to capture new business in Europe."
She estimated that roughly half of global ethylene and polyethylene supply is "offline, constrained or directly impacted. These are unparalleled numbers."
According to leading pricing indexes, polyolefin prices — especially PE — so far have increased every one of the nearly three months of the conflict so far. These increases are "unprecedented," Sagel said, noting that bumps of three to five cents per pound typically are considered large, but the current hikes are on the order of 10 to 30 cents at a time.
"We have never seen such a rapid and big increase in indexes in this period of time, or in history. And that could result in massive increases in the cost to manufacture film and other packaging within North America," he said.
Sourcing swings?
Early in the conflict, industry observers had speculated that higher prices for virgin plastics could be the push that brands and packaging companies need to source more recycled material. Prices for recycled have followed virgin's demand-based increases, but there’s little evidence so far of any demand boosts for recycled, sources say.
"What I'm calling ‘true demand’ for recycled material is still low. However, we saw some price increases — and all of that was purely in reaction to what was going on on the virgin side," said ICIS’ Bassetti. "But as soon as the conflict starts to ease, I would expect that we would see a pretty big crash in [recycled] prices, because there is no real demand."
Prior to the conflict in the Middle East, some brands and packaging companies deprioritized certain sustainability initiatives, such as adding more postconsumer recycled content into packaging, she said. That was largely driven by choices to use cheaper virgin material to cut costs. The cost-consciousness remains today and continues to depress recycled plastic demand, Bassetti said.
However, about two weeks ago "we did see the virgin pellet prices — for PET, at least — surpass the recycled pellet prices," she said. But that won't make a notable difference with recycled plastic demand unless the virgin prices rise higher and stay there for a period of time, because "nobody's prioritizing" sustainability at the moment.
One positive aspect of the war is that it has re-upped the value of sourcing material domestically, Quinn said.
"It's harder to get and transport material from outside the U.S. This, in turn, should also help to grow the recycled content market inside the U.S. and help to create price compression," he said.
Executives at Republic Services, which operates polymer recycling centers, echoed that idea during a May 7 earnings call. They described how the war with Iran had curbed the glut of virgin and recycled PET from Asia flooding the U.S. market, thus improving spreads for the company's polymer centers.
What next?
As the war approaches the three-month mark, experts say one thing is certain: The longer the disruption lasts, the more severe the effects and the longer recovery will take.
Oil is a prime example of a commodity subject to asymmetric price movement, frequently referred to as the "rockets and feathers" effect. In this economic phenomenon, events cause prices to immediately shoot up like a rocket, but following the disruption prices take longer to float down again, like a feather.
Generally, experts believe war-related supply chain disruptions will take at least 60 to 90 days to substantially unwind from their current state, and price adjustments should follow. ICIS projects that it would take at least three months for plastic prices to begin normalizing once material flows readjust. If the conflict is resolved in May or June, plastic supply chain recovery likely would occur for the remainder of 2026, with renormalization sometime next year.
"Prices will start decreasing, but it'll take all the way into 2027 for us to get back to where we were," said Bassetti. "The virgin side will probably feel a longer recovery."
If the war stretches beyond June, conditions are expected to notably worsen across global supply chains. Many leading economies, including the United States and China, have strategic inventories of commodities like oil to help weather short-term disruptions. But certain reserves are dwindling, putting countries on the precipice of serious plastics shortages and skyrocketing prices.
This week, Bloomberg reported that Morgan Stanley analysts flagged that the global oil market is in a "race against time" before the buffers in place run out and oil prices spike, with Brent crude oil prices poised to reach record highs if the Strait of Hormuz effectively remains closed through the end of June. Goldman Sachs offered a similar discussion about buffers, and last week one of its analysts projected a six to nine-month period for oil production and shipments to renormalize — not just from the strait closure but also from infrastructure damage.
Packaging companies generally aren't banking on a quick recovery in Q2 or Q3, either. Silgan's Greenlee expects some cost recovery "as resin markets decline in the future," but that's months away. “It's going to be spread over a longer period of time, and I would not anticipate that probably starting before potentially Q4 and well into '27."
Dow anticipates the duration and severity of negative effects to polyolefin production will create lasting industry impacts, potentially including capacity shutdowns. “It is not likely that the pricing impact of these events will be temporary," Carter said, suggesting a six- to 18-month recovery timeline.
If the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked for another week, further plastic price increases are likely in June, Kelly said, but pricing isn't the only issue.
“I expect shortages in some materials to spread across our sector as we go into summer, especially in polypropylene film,” Kelly said, mentioning specific products like salad bags. “Given the Strait of Hormuz remains closed with no end in sight, manufacturers across the packaging industry will face additional [price] increases that inevitably make their way to grocery shelves and consumers.”
Several plastic packaging companies likely won't be able to withstand sustained elevated input costs or the time and effort necessary to source material from elsewhere, and they potentially could downsize or close, sources say. On the sourcing front, "everything has been optimized to run the way it does — lines, equipment, packaging format — and you can't just swap those materials out. It takes a long time," Quinn said.
"At the end of the day, these companies have to make money" and have to assess "whether they can stand to survive" current conditions, he said. "That's going to be a very difficult question."
Polyolefin producers would be wise to use caution with leveraging the current situation to improve their margins that had been suffering up until the war began, sources say, because that could create long-lasting negative effects to domestic polyolefin markets.
"They need to be careful of how much they push the [packaging] industry in the other direction," Sagel said, adding that packaging converters should stay informed about what's going on with North American PE and PP supply, production costs and margins. "Use that information to have better conversations with suppliers and explain how placing them in a non-competitive position, versus converters overseas, can have long-term effects in the North American market that are not beneficial for anybody.”
