Aluminum pricing has gone up nearly 30% since early June, while the cost of aluminum wire has actually fallen due to poor demand. Aluminum wire manufacturers have said they can no longer absorb these increased costs and raised their prices on December 1st. We will raise our prices approximately 5% on December 16th.

Copper prices reached a high on the Comex for the year closing at $3.23lb on December 2nd. They have since fallen back to $3.09lb on December 9th. The biggest factor in the continued increase is the depreciation of the US$ making copper an attractive investment. Our wire manufacturers have been raising their prices in response to the increased cost of copper. Copper pricing has been very volatile the past several years and investors can be unpredictable. It is impossible to predict, beyond the very near future, what is going to happen to copper wire prices. If copper wire prices stay where they are at, we will be raising our prices approximately 5% on December 16th.

With resin prices on the rise, we have seen the firming up of PVC conduit prices. Although there seems to be very little demand in the market to support a major increase, PVC conduit manufacturers plan to raise their prices approximately 10% on December 14th in an attempt to recoup some of the increase in costs.

Steel conduit prices have fallen to levels we haven’t seen in over 5 years. There is nothing to indicate that we will see any steel conduit price increases through the end of this year.