Staggering price increase

[oxcanary]

Yesterday went to Process Supplies in Mount Pleasant, London to buy Metol.

Fifteen months ago 300g cost me £21

Yesterday 200g cost me £61

Anyone else noticed this axis shifting phenomenon?

 

[Radost]

It was probably cheap Russki import last year. Now you are buying triple priced Yankee Metol.
Like Charlie Sheen said: Winning.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Yesterday went to Process Supplies in Mount Pleasant, London to buy Metol.

Fifteen months ago 300g cost me £21

Yesterday 200g cost me £61

Anyone else noticed this axis shifting phenomenon?

It has always been expensive to live on an island.

 

[koraks]

Yesterday went to Process Supplies in Mount Pleasant, London to buy Metol.

Fifteen months ago 300g cost me £21

Yesterday 200g cost me £61

Anyone else noticed this axis shifting phenomenon?

Prices for small volumes always vary wildly. I don't know if there's a significant upward trend, but it's certainly possible. I did a quick check and found substantially higher prices for metol in small end user quantities. Maybe it's time someone buys another 20kg bag from China and sells it on through eBay.

 

[pentaxuser]

That's an increase of about 350% in 15 months if my maths are correct. Is Metol the exception in terms of price increases?

Thanks

pentaxuser

P.S. just had a quick look on the U.K e-bay and it looks to me as if there is very little metol for sale there but what there is is not much cheaper than Process Supplies are charging

No consolation to you, the OP, but unless you can find what may be a higher volume supplier and probably not in the U.K. you may be stuck with this kind of a price increase

 

[Rudeofus]

The Metol you see on ebay is not much cheaper, and it's from Ukraine (so much for that Russian conspiracy further up). Its price per unit does come down a lot, if you order 1kg at a time. Suvatlar's prices in Germany are quite in line with that price from London.

 

[Radost]

The Metol you see on ebay is not much cheaper, and it's from Ukraine (so much for that Russian conspiracy further up). Its price per unit does come down a lot, if you order 1kg at a time. Suvatlar's prices in Germany are quite in line with that price from London.

So I guess we are price gouging…Or just forwarding the price of energy. It doubled in an year.

 

[Rudeofus]

So I guess we are price gouging…Or just forwarding the price of energy. It doubled in an year.

You can certainly see it this way. What would I suggest? Get Dimezone-S, which sells at 200$ for 50g or 350$ for 100g. Ryuji Suzuki's DS-14 needs 0.2g per liter, which means even 50g will last you very very long, and it will allow you to make decent developers for film, paper and even E-6 FD.

Of course I can already hear some folks "but I want to make exactly this dev which needs Metol". Well, bad news.

 

[Radost]

I stick to XTol. And have metol stored for d96 when I need it.

 

[Agulliver]

I work in a school science department and part of my job is ordering chemicals. Sadly, across the board since the pandemic hit, prices have risen anything from 30% to eye-watering. And the prices are not stable. I place an order, the finance team finally deigns to approve it and pass on to the supplier....the price might have gone up or down 100% in the intervening week.

The chemical industry in particular was hit by supply chain issues, global shipping problems and no doubt by the war between Russia and Ukraine which messes up raw chemical production in Eastern Europe and shipping lanes. There are other issues elsewhere in the world where volatile politics has lead to established shipping routes being abandoned for longer but safer routes. Lead times for some common chemicals have also gone up from days to sometimes months.

Add to all this the energy costs which most of us know have spiralled. In the UK we are somewhat protected by price capping for domestic homes but businesses are not protected. Nor are the facilities manufacturing the raw chemicals, wherever they might be located.

Costs more to produce the stuff. Some businesses are still trying to recover from Covid times, takes 3x as long to ship in some cases....the costs add up. And are unstable.

Even some relatively big players have had difficulties, see Kodak and Fuji struggling to obtain chemicals to manufacture film, everyday items like shampoo have been reformulated, the couple of major-ish companies still making analogue recording tape couldn't obtain gamma ferric oxide in 2022 as the price simply skyrocketed.

Chemical prices are very unstable. In my past dealings with Process Supplies, they are a *very* fair company. I have no doubts, they will not be gouging customers. The simple truth is that supply of industrial (and by extension educational and photo) chemicals is very unstable as are the prices. Keep an eye on the prices of chemicals you need, and try to buy when they're a bit lower.