Research
Cheap until it wasn’t: How abundant resin masked a fragile supply chain
Decades of petrochemical overcapacity and reliance on low-cost, globally concentrated supply created hidden fragilities in the resin market. The disruption of the Strait of Hormuz exposed these weaknesses, reshaping supply dynamics, tightening availability, and forcing packaging producers to reassess resilience, sourcing strategies, and long-term supply security.
The global resin market did not become structurally fragile overnight, nor did it become fragile because of a single actor. Three decades of rational investment decisions across the Persian Gulf, the US, and China created structural oversupply and geographic concentration of production in global resin markets. Then, on February 28, 2026, US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran triggered the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and the structural vulnerability that years of cheap, abundant resin had made easy to ignore became a logistical problem overnight. This report explores how we got here, and what producers can do now to diversify supply and improve resilience.