The consumables giant said that it had continued to endure “extraordinary cost increases in raw materials, packaging and freight which are now being exacerbated by additional inflationary pressures across a variety of other overheads” with labour costs cited in particular.

Importantly, the company highlighted the seismic events in Europe affecting the availability of natural gas from Russia. 

“The mechanisms to ensure continued supply of products to our customers in this region will be the subject of a separate communication,” Flint stated. 

CEO Steve Dryden described the inflationary environment as “relentless”.

 “At Flint Group we are used to successfully meeting macro-economic challenges but we are now entering a new environment of relentless cost inflation of a magnitude not witnessed in decades,” he said. 

“Our primary purpose is to make sure our valued customers are supplied with the high quality products and services they expect from Flint Group. To achieve this, we must recover inflationary cost increases by building inventories of raw materials, sourcing alternate raw materials and investing in our workforce; we are continuing to underwrite the security of supply.”

From 1 January 2023 the company will implement a general price increase to recover inflationary costs, “primarily related to labour”. 

Flint said that raw material, packaging, freight and energy cost increases from the company’s supply base will be recovered via existing price adjustment mechanisms. 

The increase in energy costs will be tackled through a separate energy surcharge mechanism, something that is already in place at some of its business units including the UK.

Flint Group is headquartered in Luxembourg and had sales of €1.5bn (£1.3bn) last year. 

Its range of inks and pressroom chemicals a wide range of conventional printing processes including sheetfed, heatset web, gravure, flexo, screen and metal decorating. 

It also owns digital press manufacturer Xeikon.