The impact of Hurricane Katrina on industrial buyers could be greater than any prior hurricane on record. In fact, purchasing managers should plan on short supplies and higher prices for a wide range of energy products, manufacturing commodities, downstream mill products of all varieties and key construction materials. The full view on supplies remains clouded, however, with only limited assessments available from the hurricane-ravaged Gulf of Mexico.

However, buyers responding to a PURCHASING magazine poll also said that steel, zinc, myriad chemicals, various plastics, rubber, industrial gases, liquid hydrogen, building materials and lumber products have become hard to get. They also say costs are rising for commodities and components, with deliveries coming with new fuel surcharges.

A typical reader response: "We are also receiving transportation surcharges from many suppliers that they blame on increased gasoline prices due to Katrina." Here's a quick peak at supply and pricing outlooks in the post-Katrina market:

While media headlines have centered on $4 gasoline forecasts, business and industry also will have to cope with natural gas costs this winter around $15 per million British thermal units. Buyers already are reporting hard-to-obtain supplies of affordable propane and such distillates as the heating oils, jet fuel and diesel. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman forecasts that U.S. energy costs this winter will be the highest in 10 years. Reason: Four refineries in the U.S. Gulf Coast will remain off-line for months—and there is limited excess capacity to deal with such a production outage. Also, four natural-gas processing plants still aren't operating due to the need for repairs.

Spot-market prices for wood panel and plywood prices exploded by as much as 30% in the days after the hurricane. Analyst Peter Ruschmeier at Lehman Brothers in New York writes that lumber-product prices are expected to stay elevated for some time since demand of raw materials—timber and logs—will exceed available supply. There is a generally snarled forest-products supply chain system in the Gulf Coast region and in southern Florida since a dozen sawmills and plywood plants have been damaged or closed, acres of timberlands have been destroyed and this year's harvest has been delayed.

There are idled paper and paperboard mills and box plants tightening supply of paper-based packaging materials. That's also why higher containerboard prices are expected by analyst Claudia Shank at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. She sees "a broken supply chain that has tightened boxboard supply" and notes that 13% of North American containerboard capacity is in southern Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Ken Simonson, chief economist of the Associated General Contractors of America, in Alexandria, Va., estimates construction costs will jump 10% through 2006. Buyers say availability of gypsum wallboard (also known as drywall), roofing products, insulation materials, cement and cement board is a concern since several plants in the region have been flooded or otherwise damaged. "Cement and concrete was already in tight supply before the hurricane hit, so the storm has put more pressure on demand," says analyst Steven Chercover at D.A. Davidson & Co. in Great Falls, Mont. Also, deliveries of the many kinds of materials needed to clean, repair, reopen or rebuild will be disrupted by the damage to roads, rail and port facilities, says chief economist David Seiders at the National Association of Home Builders in Washington, D.C.

The price of construction-grade steel as well as the sheet products used to make cars and industrial equipment is expected to rise by as much as 20% in coming months because New Orleans flooding has limited the supply and distribution of such raw materials as liquid hydrogen and scrap steel.

Prices for zinc, the key coating alloy for galvanized steel, have hit an eight-year high since the London Metal Exchange suspended deliveries of spot material in September. At press time, it is still unclear what has happened to the 250,000 metric tons of LME zinc in the New Orleans warehouse in the wake of the hurricane. The depot held almost half of all zinc traded on the LME.

Kevin Swift, chief economist of the American Chemistry Council, says manufacturers of chemicals use 12% of U.S. natural gas so they will have to pass along price increases. Chemical and resins buyers already are reporting higher prices and tightened supply of such feedstock chemicals as ethylene, styrene, propylene, vinyl acetate, the anhydrides and all glycols. Similar supply chain problems are evident, buyers report, for the various polyethylene and, polyester resins, polyvinyl chloride resins for plastic pipe and fittings and the SBS polymers and SEBS polymers used to make paving and roofing products.

There are an estimated 260 plastics processing plants in the affected Gulf Coast and southern Florida area. Many facilities will continue having trouble getting resins, operating injection molding and other processing machinery and/or shipping finished parts and packaging materials to buyers.

Buyers report that synthetic rubber polymers have risen quickly and analysts have changed forecasts to boost synthetic rubber prices by more than 15% as soaring oil prices increasingly push up processing costs. They also believe natural rubber prices will rise through next year because of shipping charges even though output from the world's leading producing countries in Asia is expected to increase.

The hurricane's damage to the New Orleans hydrogen facility of Air Products is tightening supply of the silicon wafers used to make microchips. The hydrogen is used in the deposition of epitaxial films on silicon wafers. Market researcher iSuppli Corp. in El Segundo, Calif., says global production of semiconductors will be hampered for a time.