The price rises will be across the company’s heatset ink, news ink, sheetfed ink, transfer media, and press room chemical portfolios. However, it has not detailed the price increases.
Instead, Flint said the “paradigm shifting” impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the printing consumables market “continues unabated with further shortages of core raw materials, human resources and logistical services, creating previously unforeseen instability within the printing consumables global supply chain”.
Tony Lord, president of Flint Group’s CPW and OPS divisions, said: “This once in a generational event has created a structural scarcity of core raw materials as upstream precursor and primary raw material providers within the supply chain are directing their reduced [capacities] to more lucrative industries than the printing consumables markets.
“This creates a binary impact of not only shortages of raw materials but an exponential increase in pricing for those raw materials we can obtain.”
He added: “As a consequence of our historical relationships with global suppliers of core raw materials, coupled with our extensive manufacturing infrastructure, we believe we are in the best position within the industry to ensure our strategic partners remain supplied with agreed volumes.
“It is however an unavoidable consequence of prevailing market conditions, that we have no alternative whilst seeking to minimise the impact of price increases, it is inevitable that cost increases will be passed into the supply chain.
“We were hopeful the market instability seen during 2021 would have moderated but regrettably we see no possibility of a cessation in prevailing conditions for 2022.”
Flint added that, recognising the situation, it is the company’s duty to its partners that “at the first opportunity we engage in constructive dialogue to discuss how best we can minimise the impact of the current situation and ensure our partners remain supplied with their needs”.
The company had already flagged last month that prices across its offset products for packaging would need to go up again early this year. In August Flint had indicated that further price increases were likely because of the supply chain situation.
