Over the past year, the business has experienced more shortages than I have come across around my thirty years experience. In the past I have seen sharp price increases, and I have experienced several shortages, and delivery problems resulting from material allocations coming from resin vendors. This is definitely the first instance I have seen all these issues at the same time. Polytetraflouroethylene (TFE) and PVDF are both on allocation. The two of these resins are in short supply. The PTFE Sheet product PTFE (TFE) along with Kynar manufacturing requires a mineral called Fluorspar that is mined in Mongolia and China. The world demand for this mineral has increased significantly, along with the supply has tightened. PTFE materials have high temperature resistance, excellent chemical resistance and really low co-efficient of friction (slick) and is utilised throughout a lot of applications from non-stick fry pots and pans to ptfe tape for personal use. This mineral is actually the ...