Chemical Engineering

Historical Bulk Chemical Prices

It can be difficult to find a comprehensive source of information regarding the current bulk price of chemicals. See below for a few options that provide older price data that can be used to estimate current prices (box at the bottom of the page).

Intratec Solutions
Intratec Solutions offers free previews of their chemical price data. Scroll down to "Commodities Covered by Industry" to see the full list of 225 chemicals. Most of the data presented in the preview is from 2019-2020.
Texas A&M Chemical Pricing Database Spreadsheet
Texas A&M compiled this list of citations from a variety of sources, such as ICIS Chemical Business and Chemical Week. (Click on the Excel file at the bottom of the page to access) Each row provides a citation reporting a price for the listed chemical. You can locate this citation for price info (Contact brejkelly@umass.edu if you need assistance locating the citation!)

Current Bulk Chemical Prices

Current prices for bulk industrial chemicals are often reported in trade journals such as Chemical Week and ICIS Chemical Business (formerly Chemical Market Reporter). Search the journals by limiting to the publication name and then adding the keywords. Search for the name of the chemical or the chemical abbreviation and keyword terms such as "price" and "production."

Try these business databases to search the trade journals:

Business Source Complete
Content Type: Business journal articles, company reports. Description: Peer-reviewed journals, trade journals, and business magazines. Company SWOT reports. Includes the Harvard Business Review, Volume 1 (1922) to present.

Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.
ABI/INFORM Complete
Content type: Business journal articles. Description: ABI/INFORM is the library's largest online full-text business journal collection. 3,000 business periodicals - peer-reviewed journals, trade journals, business magazines, 1960 - present, including the Wall Street Journal, 1984 - present.

Available on campus to all, or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Try these links for current chemical prices from suppliers.

BuyersGuideChem - directory of chemicals & chemical suppliers
ChemExper - Catalog of Chemical Suppliers - products from chemical suppliers
Fisher Scientific - product catalog
Sigma Aldrich - product catalog

CAS SciFinderⁿ
FIRST-TIME USERS: Click more... below to create an account to use SciFinder
Integrated in SciFinderⁿ, CHEMCATS provides verified available quantities, prices and supplier contact information for millions of commercially available products from hundreds of suppliers. Search under "Suppliers" by substance name or CAS RN.

To use SciFinder, you must create an account using your UMass Amherst email address. Click here to create the account.

After initial account creation, available on campus or off-campus to UMass Amherst students, staff and faculty with an UMass Amherst IT NetID (user name) and password.

Estimating Chemical Prices with a Producer Price Index (PPI)

Present-day chemical prices can be estimated from historical chemical prices using a Producer Price Index (PPI), such as those produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for chemical and allied products, using the method described in Hubbard (2021):

Updated Price = Old Price x (PPI at New Date)/(PPI at Old Date)

See Hubbard, D. E. (2021, March), Efficacy of Using Producer Price Indexes for Bulk Chemical Prices in Student Design Projects Paper presented at ASEE 2021 Gulf-Southwest Annual Conference, Waco, Texas. https://peer.asee.org/36374

Last Updated: Aug 21, 2025 2:30 PM
URL: https://guides.library.umass.edu/chemeng
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Subjects: Chemical Engineering, Engineering