Nitrile exam glove market report
What's moving nitrile exam glove prices right now
Raw materials, factory prices and shipping — tracked from public government and exchange data, updated every day, explained in plain terms.
- Import price Exam gloves from Malaysia
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- Synthetic rubber Proxy for nitrile's raw material
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- Crude oil Upstream of synthetic rubber
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- Ocean shipping Share of the import price
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ScopeDisposable nitrile exam gloves. U.S. customs reports nitrile and natural-latex exam gloves under one code (HTS 4015.12.10.10) and does not separate them, so import prices, country shares and shipping costs cover both. Vinyl gloves and non-medical (industrial, household) gloves are not included.
In brief
The short version
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Price
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Outlook
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Supply
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Shipping
Raw materials · The early warning
Raw-material costs reach glove prices about four months later
Nitrile gloves are made from synthetic rubber, which is made from oil. When rubber gets more expensive, glove makers raise their prices — but it takes a few months to reach U.S. buyers, because materials are bought ahead, then gloves are made, shipped and cleared through customs.
Exhibit 1
Exam-glove prices follow rubber, a few months behind
How to read: both lines start at 100 in January 2024, so you can compare their ups and downs — 130 means 30% higher than then.
- Synthetic rubber (butadiene rubber, BR)
- Exam-glove import price (Malaysia)
What rubber prices point to next
View data table
Sources: Shanghai Futures Exchange (butadiene rubber, main contract); U.S. Census Bureau (HTS 4015.12.10.10).
Raw materials aren't the whole story: factory capacity, demand and tariffs move glove prices too. The 2021 shortage and the oversupply that followed had little to do with rubber.
Sources & factory prices
Where U.S. exam gloves come from, and what each country charges
Almost every disposable exam glove used in the U.S. is imported. Below: which countries they come from, and the average price importers declared at customs — the price at the foreign port (FOB), before ocean shipping and U.S. tariffs. Real transactions, not list prices or quotes.
Exhibit 2
Share of U.S. exam-glove imports
How to read: each bar is 100% of U.S. nitrile and latex exam-glove imports by dollar value; compare 2024 with the last 12 months.
View data table
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, imports for consumption by country of origin, HTS 4015.12.10.10.
Exhibit 3
Price per case of 1,000, by country
How to read: the colored line is that country; the gray line is the average across all countries, for comparison. Each panel has its own scale.
- All-country average
Malaysia
Thailand
Indonesia
Vietnam
View data table
Source: U.S. Census Bureau; customs value ÷ quantity, converted to cases of 1,000.
Ocean shipping · Per case, not per container
Shipping is a small part of the price
Container rates make headlines, but one 40-foot container holds thousands of cases, so a big jump per container is small per case. U.S. Customs records what importers actually paid to ship gloves to the first U.S. port.
Exhibit 4
Shipping cost per case of 1,000
How to read: each bar is one month's average ocean freight and insurance per case, all countries; hover or tap for its share of the price.
View data table
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, import charges (freight + insurance to first U.S. port).
Method & sources
How these numbers are made
Public data only, refreshed automatically every day. U.S. trade data is published monthly, about five weeks after the month ends, so the latest import month always trails the raw-material data.
- Exam-glove import price
- U.S. Census Bureau international trade data for HTS 4015.12.10.10, medical gloves of vulcanized rubber — nitrile and natural-latex exam gloves, which customs does not report separately. Vinyl gloves (a plastic, classified in Chapter 39) and non-medical rubber gloves fall under other codes and are not included. Customs value divided by quantity, converted from dozen pairs to cases of 1,000 gloves.
- Ocean shipping
- Census "import charges" for the same code: freight, insurance and other costs of moving the goods from the foreign port to the first U.S. port of entry. Census does not split this by transport mode; for a bulky, low-value product like gloves it is almost entirely ocean freight. Excludes tariffs, port fees and inland trucking.
- Synthetic rubber
- Daily settlement price of the main butadiene rubber (BR) futures contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange, averaged by month. It is not nitrile itself — no exchange lists nitrile latex — but it shares nitrile's main building block, butadiene.
- Crude oil
- Daily Brent spot price from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, via the St. Louis Fed's FRED database.
- Why four months
- Across Aug 2023 – Jul 2026, rubber prices and the Malaysian import price were essentially unrelated in the same month (correlation ≈ 0) but closely related four months apart (≈ 0.75). We will revisit the lag as more data comes in.
- What this is not
- Not a price quote, forecast or investment advice. Averages across all importers hide wide differences in glove grade, thickness and order size; your price depends on your specification.
Glossary
- Import price (customs value)
- What U.S. importers declared they paid the overseas seller, with the goods at the foreign port (FOB) — before ocean shipping, insurance and U.S. tariffs. Averaged across every importer and glove grade, so it tracks the market, not any one quote.
- Case of 1,000
- Census reports gloves in dozen pairs; we convert to cases of 1,000 gloves (10 boxes of 100), the unit most buyers order in.
- Futures price
- The price traders agree on today for delivery in the coming months, set on an exchange every trading day. It reacts quickly, which is why it moves before factory prices do.
- Index (January 2024 = 100)
- A way to put a yuan-per-ton price and a dollar-per-case price on one chart: each line is divided by its own January 2024 value. 130 means 30% higher than January 2024.
- Leads by four months
- Changes in rubber prices have tended to show up in U.S. glove import prices about four months later — the time it takes to buy materials, make gloves, ship them and clear customs.
Planning a nitrile glove order?
We watch these numbers so our customers can plan purchases with them. Talk to us about specs, volume, and timing.
Or email us directly at contact@steracaresafety.com