US military strikes on Iran are sending oil markets into uncertainty and triggering supply chain contingency planning among cannabis packaging manufacturers, whose input costs run on petrochemical-derived plastics.

Alex Gonzalez, founder of Calyx Containers, has been looking at indexes. “The news about oil, and how it affects everything, whether people realize it or not. It’s one of the main components of the supply chain, especially in plastics.”

Calyx manufactures all types of packaging, meaning its input costs are directly linked to petrochemical indices. When oil moves, so does the price of the raw materials from which the company builds its products. The Iranian strikes introduced a new variable into the supply chain environment, which was under pressure from rate volatility and years of margin compression at the operator level. “It’s an industry that faces margin erosion and price compression from the end consumer alone. Then there are others who have no idea and no plan.”

© Calyx Vessels

The awareness gap that Alex describes is not evenly distributed. Some operators are buying futures, building inventory positions and stress testing sources of redundancy. Others have not started. The difference will become apparent in the coming months as notices of price increases start to arrive from suppliers.

The response to buying futures, as rational as it is at the individual level, carries its own risk. Increased buy signals have increased demand, which tightens supply, which leads more buyers to the same behavior. “We are at the edge of the sphere. If there is so much supply left, I want a piece, prices go up, everyone puts their hand up. And what we don’t know yet is if the supply will continue and mature, or if the bull will ease or if it will completely reverse, where everyone has too much and everyone is set for a great scenario of nothing.”

Calyx builds relationships with vendors and side-by-side competitors, following the logic that the volume of collective purchases creates leverage that a single company alone cannot produce. “We’re only as good as our supply chain and our partners. How we deal with it together, and put in higher volumes to justify keeping our current cost structure. It’s going to make us all competitive.”

The pressure is already moving in the following categories. Vape hardware companies spent about six months absorbing tariff-driven cost increases before those costs began to trickle down to operators, and now they’re arriving at packaging talks with budgets that haven’t adjusted to the new environment. “If vaping prices go up, I know customers will come back to us, and they say they have the same budget.”

Alex has no idea where the situation in Iran is going. “If anyone says they know what’s going to happen, they’re lying through their teeth. We’re being honest, these are the actions we’re taking with the information we have today. We don’t know where it’s going yet.”

For Alex, the fragmentation of the cannabis industry makes a collective response the only viable option. “Cannabis is an industry, as much as we like to think it’s important, it’s just one point in the bigger picture of things. That’s why we need to come together. What are you doing, and what am I doing, and how can we weather the storm together.”