Needing plastic surgery?

One year after the London Metal Exchange introduced futures contracts on polyethylene and polypropylene, liquidity remains patchy. Can the market ever provide stability to an increasingly volatile industry? Gareth Gore reports

Scientific discovery has always been one of mankind's great preoccupations. But few nineteenth century scientists could have predicted the huge impact that modifying oil products into plastics would have. It is now estimated that each person in the developed world consumes on average more than their body weight in plastics a year. But plastics producers have until now remained unable to control the unpredictable nature of the market, and the industry remains as vulnerable to price movements as