Cheap oil = lower plasic prices?

[Snake45]

FWIW, the most expensive part of the price of a bottle of paint (if a glass bottle) is the bottle itself, and the makeup of a glass bottle does not include petroleum.

Art

You might well be right. But I've never heard them blame a price increase on glass or bottle prices. I HAVE heard them blame it on oil.

Also, it that's true, they ought to have a bottle turn-in/recycling program. Turn in an old paint bottle, get 50% off on your next bottle. I'd never have to buy paint again!

Pactra used to have plastic 1/4 oz bottles for a while. I wonder if they were cheaper than glass, and if so, why wouldn't that work again?

[Yenkocamaro]

[Ace-Garageguy]

After reading this post, I think I'll have another couple of doughnuts.   

Best answer.

[Jairus]

Prices never go down.
You know that.
The manufacturers might receive the raw materials at a lower price, but they never pass the benefit on.  Most of the time they invest in upgrades to make the product better.
 

[slusher]

After reading this post, I think I'll have another couple of doughnuts.   

Some mini chocolate doughnuts... 

[Ace-Garageguy]

Also, it that's true, they ought to have a bottle turn-in/recycling program. Turn in an old paint bottle, get 50% off on your next bottle. I'd never have to buy paint again!

Pactra used to have plastic 1/4 oz bottles for a while. I wonder if they were cheaper than glass, and if so, why wouldn't that work again?

Coke, of course, ditched their bottle-recycling bottle-reusing program eons ago, citing cost. Lots easier to get sugar water out of a Coke bottle than to get paint out of a tiny bottle.

Though I have no hard data to back it up, Id think glass bottles would be cheaper than plastic...where a tough little bottle that's solvent-resistant is necessary. After all, glass is just melted sand.

Thanks, Pete. I used the wrong term. 

Edited February 1, 2016 by Ace-Garageguy

[Pete J.]

There is a difference between reuse and recycle. Glass is recycled every day and is a very useful product that way.  Reusing a glass bottle involves cleaning, sterilizing(for food use) and inspecting to make sure it isn't chipped or cracked and is safe for reuse.  All items that have a cost associated with them.  Recycling involves throwing them in a pile and feeding them into a furnace to melt them down for reuse.  A much smaller process.  If you are talking about paint bottles, then you have to involve solvents to dissolve the paint and those are generally petroleum based.  Then you get into local VOC regulations etc etc.  What starts out as a good idea generally gets to the point that it just costs too much.  Incidentally, it is the packaging costs that drives the cost of model paints.  Example Alclad runs about $8 and ounce.  Reasonable price right?  Well, I can often pick up a quart of Mirrachrome(automotive chrome paint) for about $150 which is a little more than half the price of Alclad and will give you all the chrome you need for your lifetime and the lifetime of your kids and grand kid.  Per ounce a gallon is even cheaper.  Get all your friends together, by a gallon and repackage it to split it. 

[peteski]

I'm one of those shoppers who actually reads labels. I can attest to the fact that product sizes are shrinking. It's the dirty little secret of food producers/manufacturers. A one-pound can of coffee is now 14-15 ounces. Same size can... just less coffee in it. They do this to almost all packaged foods.

You're not the only one to notice what has been going on for several years now. Just see what Incredible Shrinking Products others see out there. This is a good one.

Things like cans of tuna have been shrinking for a long time. Not only is there less product, the cans themselves are made from much thinner steel.  Peanut butter packaging seems the same on the outside, but if you look on the bottom of the jar, instead of being flat, there is a deep dome there, reducing the volume and weight of the product!  Sneaky tricks!

I had to laugh last time I picked up box of Nabisco Chicken in a Biskit crackers. While the box looked normal, there was something strange about it. When I brought it home I compared to the onld box I still had and there was less product in the new one. But the box was slightly shorted and not as deep as the old one.

 

It also does burn me up that when the oil (and gasoline) prices skyrocketed in the early 2000's all the shipping companies and airlines all jacked up their prices due to the fuel costs. Now that we are back at the early 2000's cost of fuel, nobody is lowering their prices. The airlines just announced that they are raising their prices and raking the record profits.

[Tom Geiger]

and they adjust the percentages of the contents...  I worked for Nabisco for a while and I saw interesting stuff in their offices.  For instance the Planters division adjusted the mix of nuts in the mixed nuts cans every week based on the commodity prices of each type of nut.  So if you are going through a can and think to yourself that there's more Brazil nuts in there than usual, you are probably right.  That was the nut they could buy cheapest that week.

[Joe Handley]

You're not the only one to notice what has been going on for several years now. Just see what Incredible Shrinking Products others see out there. This is a good one.

Things like cans of tuna have been shrinking for a long time. Not only is there less product, the cans themselves are made from much thinner steel.  Peanut butter packaging seems the same on the outside, but if you look on the bottom of the jar, instead of being flat, there is a deep dome there, reducing the volume and weight of the product!  Sneaky tricks!

I had to laugh last time I picked up box of Nabisco Chicken in a Biskit crackers. While the box looked normal, there was something strange about it. When I brought it home I compared to the onld box I still had and there was less product in the new one. But the box was slightly shorted and not as deep as the old one.

 

It also does burn me up that when the oil (and gasoline) prices skyrocketed in the early 2000's all the shipping companies and airlines all jacked up their prices due to the fuel costs. Now that we are back at the early 2000's cost of fuel, nobody is lowering their prices. The airlines just announced that they are raising their prices and raking the record profits.

I know a pilot that will be retiring in the next couple years, the bankruptsy killed his pension, but are they going to do anything to correct this with their pilots, probably not.

 

[Art Anderson]

Coke, of course, ditched their bottle-recycling bottle-reusing program eons ago, citing cost. Lots easier to get sugar water out of a Coke bottle than to get paint out of a tiny bottle.

Though I have no hard data to back it up, Id think glass bottles would be cheaper than plastic...where a tough little bottle that's solvent-resistant is necessary. After all, glass is just melted sand.

Thanks, Pete. I used the wrong term. 

Bill, the returnable (deposit bottles) beverage bottles went away perhaps 30 yrs ago, for several reasons:  The cost of handling both at the retailers and the added fuel cost of the load going back to the bottling plant.  Next, the demise of local bottling plants (your friendly local Coca-Cola bottler who had that really cool bottling line set up in the front window!) in favor of more regional distributors).   And of course, health reasons--there was always the possibility of incomplete sanitation of reusable bottles, and that coupled with the rise of litigation for all manner of causes. This lead to the introduction of disposable glass bottles, which while recyclable, still added tare weight to the load of delivery trucks.

Aluminum cans, of course are eminently recyclable (and in fact, several states require a deposit on all disposable beverage cans and bottles, helping to ensure that they will be turned in for recycling.  The modern plastic beverage bottles are also quite recyclable, and being made of PET-G plastic, can be melted down, used for products way beyond just making new bottles out of them (for example, the so-called 'Micro-Fiber" cleaning tools (mops, dust and polishing cloths, dusting wands are very commonly made from micro-fibers spun from recycled PET-G).  An added plus is the much lighter weight of a plastic beverage or water bottle, meaning that the delivery truck can carry more product for the same weight of cargo.

Art

[peteski]

I know a pilot that will be retiring in the next couple years, the bankruptsy killed his pension, but are they going to do anything to correct this with their pilots, probably not.

 

Not sure what that has to do with low oil prices and airlines making record profits.  Sounds like that airline wasn't very healthy to begin with, or maybe it declared bankruptcy to get rid of debts (like pensions).

[SfanGoch]

Bill, the returnable (deposit bottles) beverage bottles went away perhaps 30 yrs ago, for several reasons:  The cost of handling both at the retailers and the added fuel cost of the load going back to the bottling plant.

NYS, and nine others, do have container deposits. NY's is a nickel per metal can, glass or plastic bottle, paper container or combination under 1 gal. Wine and liquor bottles are exempted. You can return them to any business or use reverse vending machines which are usually located at larger supermarkets. When I was a kid in the '60s, there  was a 2 cent deposit on bottles only. Collecting them paid for a lot of cool junk for me and my friends.

[Joe Handley]

Not sure what that has to do with low oil prices and airlines making record profits.  Sounds like that airline wasn't very healthy to begin with, or maybe it declared bankruptcy to get rid of debts (like pensions).

It happened post-9/11, IIRC, the whole industry went bankrupt and looking for concessions, which included the pilots' pensions, now they appear to be making money almost hand over fist.

[Snake45]

I notice today that Micro Mark sells six of the 1/2 oz Model Master-type bottles for $8, and that's full metal retail. I'm sure Testor pays much less than $1 apiece for them in bulk--maybe less than 50 cents. I forget what 1/2 oz MM paints retail for these days, but last time I bought a 1/4 oz bottle of Testor it was somewhere around $2. (I can remember buying these for 10 cents apiece. Might even have some 10c marked bottles still around here somewhere.)