Nylon Prices

One Fiber, Several Different Prices

Nylon pricing resources cover both current prices and historical data, and the first lesson is that the plural is deliberate. Nylon reaches a garment factory through a chain: polymer chip is spun into yarn, yarn is woven or knitted into fabric, and solid resin is molded into parts. Each stage has its own market, its own units and its own price movements, and a change at the chip stage may take weeks to appear in a fabric quotation.

So begin any price search by naming your stage. A spinner needs chip and caprolactam-linked data. A weaver needs yarn prices by type and denier. A garment maker usually needs fabric prices, which this guide tracks on a dedicated page, and a molder needs resin prices. Match each resource below to the stage it reports — chip, yarn, fabric or resin — and your search becomes much shorter.

The Specialist Reporting Services

CCFEI, the China Chemical and Fiber Economic Information Network, reports from inside the world's largest nylon-producing region, which makes its nylon price coverage especially relevant for chip and yarn buyers sourcing from Asia. Emerging Textiles publishes nylon price reporting with an international trade perspective, useful when you want prices interpreted alongside demand, capacity and regional movement rather than as bare numbers. Both reward regular reading: a single visit gives a level, but following either service over a season gives the trend, which is what purchasing decisions usually turn on.

ICIS pricing covers nylon 6 and nylon 6,6 as chemical products, the authoritative end of the market where contract and spot prices for the polymer itself are assessed. A dated ICIS sample from December 2010, linked in the references, serves as historical data. Old price reports remain valuable as baselines: comparing a historical assessment with a current one shows how far a market has moved, but an old figure is never a price anyone would quote today.

Resin Prices and Marketplace Yarn Categories

IDES, known as The Plastic Web, reports nylon resin prices from the plastics side of the industry, including the secondary market where surplus and reclaimed resin changes hands. That perspective matters because textile and engineering nylon share the same polymer: a buyer who only watches fiber sources misses half the demand pulling on supply. When resin and fiber buyers compete for the same chip output, prices can firm even in a quiet apparel season.

Alibaba's price categories take the opposite approach, showing live offers organized by yarn type: nylon 6 DTY, nylon 6 FDY, nylon 6 HOY and nylon 66 DTY. Those abbreviations describe how the yarn was drawn and textured, and each serves different fabrics, so the categories teach the market's vocabulary while they display its offers. ChinaTexNet's nylon chip price coverage completes the map at the chain's start. Marketplace numbers are asking prices from individual sellers, best used to test whether a quote you hold sits inside the live range.

How a Buyer Combines These Sources

A workable routine uses each source for what it does best. Check a reporting service such as ICIS, CCFEI or Emerging Textiles for the assessed level and direction of your stage of the chain. Check marketplace categories for the live spread of offers in your exact yarn type or form. Then request direct quotations for your specification and quantity, and judge them against the first two checks. If a quote sits far outside both, ask why; there is usually a specification difference, a quality difference or a mistake worth finding before money moves.

Keep your own history as you go. Save the dated reports and quotations behind each purchase, because keeping dated reports beside current data is what turns price checking from a scramble into a record. Background reading in About Nylon Fibers will help you interpret what you find, and the sibling pages in this section break the same method down for yarn, fabric and resin in turn.