A four-week substitution study that caught a 12% pricing exposure before it hit the CFO.

1. 01 The decision

   A downstream customer had signalled it would migrate to non-phthalate plasticizers across two of the client's top-10 SKUs. The commercial team needed to know how the substitution economics would move over the next 24 months — before repricing the affected products.

2. 02 How we ran it

   Two analysts modelled the full plasticizer stack: raw-material inputs, capacity utilisation across the 12 largest producers, and demand-side pricing power in the three end-use categories that mattered. A mid-project interim review flagged that our first cut of the model was understating the client's exposure by roughly twelve percent — driven by an assumption on Chinese capacity coming online in 2026. We rebuilt the base case before the deliverable went to the CFO.

3. 03 What we shipped

   A tightly-scoped 32-page deck with a live Excel model the commercial team could re-run under their own scenarios. Anonymised primary interview quotes with three downstream customers. A 30-minute working call.

4. 04 What changed

   The client corrected the SKU-level pricing before publishing the FY schedule and repositioned two products inside the following quarter. Their internal narrative shifted from "defend margin" to "reprice ahead of the shift." The desk was retained for the same category the next year.

Client identity is anonymised in this write-up. On-record versions are available on request where the client has given explicit consent — reach the desk for named references.