What are you paying for dry flake shellac

I pulled this from the web,

Mr. Lyle Allen, the Director of Sales ? Paint Channel, for Rustoleum Sales Group,answers questions about their Zinsser Brand of Shellac products for Texas Paint.

Texas Paint: ?What is causing the shortage of raw shellac resin??

Mr. Allen: ?Shellac is produced from a resin of natural origin, harvested primarily in India and Thailand. There, shellac resin is secreted by the tiny ?lac? insect as a protective shell for its larvae, and deposited on trees. Once the insect?s life cycle is complete, the dried shell remains ? thus the name shel ? lac. The dried secretion left on the tree is called seedlac, the base material that after refining and processing becomes flaked shellac.

Market pricing for seedlac is determined by the amount/quantity of the annual harvest for a particular year. However, we have now experienced 3 straight years in the decline of the annual seedlac harvest, with the 2011 harvest prediction looking very grim.  As a naturally harvested product, in the past seedlac demand has been affected by weather (Typhoons in the 1980s drove prices up over 130% in a five-year period) and even transportation worker strikes.

Since 2000, environmental changes have decreased the available supply of shellac. Pesticides in farm use can disturb lac bug reproduction. In addition, the economic boom in China has made Southeast Asian trees very popular for lumber harvesting challenging regeneration.
 
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