Independent benchmark gives corrugated buyers and suppliers a cost-based reference for price adjustment mechanisms in long-term contracts, with a Nowcast and 18-month Forecast for planning and budgeting.
Charlotte, North Carolina based ResourceWise has announced the launch of the ResourceWise U.S. Unbleached Corrugated Box Cost Index™, an independent benchmark designed to provide corrugated packaging buyers and suppliers with a cost-based reference for adjusting long-term, volume-committed contracts as underlying industry costs change.
Many corrugated agreements use a published index as the basis for a price adjustment mechanism, which facilitates efficient price adjustment once initial prices are set through negotiation. The ResourceWise Box Cost Index provides a cost-based alternative built to reflect all the costs of manufacturing and delivering a finished corrugated box, including fiber, labor, energy, chemicals, maintenance, capital, overhead, and freight.
Each quarter, the model recalibrates the relative weight of each cost category based on changes in underlying costs. This enables the Index to reflect how the industry’s cost structure evolves over time and is designed to address distortions and volatility that can arise when adjustment mechanisms rely on narrower inputs or fixed cost weights.
“Both buyers and suppliers need a reliable cost-based reference they can use to adjust long-term contracts,” said Matt Elhardt, CRO at ResourceWise. “We’ve spent decades building deep industry intelligence and production cost models across the pulp, paper, and packaging value chain. The ResourceWise Box Cost Index brings that expertise and proprietary data, including fiber price data, together in a common, data-driven reference for contract adjustments.”
The ResourceWise Box Cost Index combines proprietary industry intelligence, engineering-based cost models, and market pricing data to estimate changes in the industry-average cost of manufacturing and delivering unbleached corrugated boxes in the United States.
ResourceWise has developed asset intelligence and modeled production costs across the pulp, paper, and packaging value chain for decades. The Box Cost Index extends that foundation across the corrugated production chain, using detailed facility intelligence and a broad set of input prices to model industry-average costs dynamically each quarter.
The quarterly recalibration of cost-component weights ensures the Index remains aligned with changes in the modeled industry cost structure as individual inputs move over time and prevents the volatility that can arise from fixed-weight methodologies.
