Softwood and steel pipe prices soar.(Forum)(Brief Article)

Plant Engineering, May, 2005

Inflation is running red hot among the products that plant engineers have to buy in order to maintain and repair the factory. Among 21 industries in the PLANT ENGINEERING construction supplies price index, product price inflation accelerated among 17.

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The softwood industry continued to lead the pack with a 48.7% price increase in February 2005. That's up from a 17.1% rate set six months earlier. This time around, however, softwood producers can partially justify their price hikes by looking downstream in the supply chain: sawmills hiked their product prices 10.9% in February, up from 1.4% in August '04. Other millwork producers also pushed through a big 7.7% price jump in February.

Worse yet, the inflation parade did...