People in the ink industry might ask themselves, will normal years of steady Raw Material supply and stable costs ever return? We all remember the “perfect storm” in 2008 when raw material prices were increasing fast on the back of the crude oil price surge, followed by the world wide economic collapse in 2009. But now, once again there are many challenges facing the key ink raw materials.
“I’ve been in procurement in a number of different industries for over 25 years, but the current raw material challenges, on such a wide front, I have never experienced before” says Jan Paul van der Velde, Senior Vice President Procurement and Executive Management Team member of Flint Group. “While the challenges in 2008 were clearly related to pricing of crude oil, the current challenges have quite a differentiated background. There are two key contributors. The first is a combination of a significant de-stocking of most raw material supply chains following the economic collapse at the end of 2008, with the current mild reverse in the industry and increased demands causing major shortages. The second one is caused by ongoing base chemical cost increases since early 2009, which could be due to demand weakness earlier in the value chain not being passed through, but now, in a climate of economic revival suddenly they are coming through quite hard. A contributing factor is a number of “force majeure” situations and key base raw material suppliers moving away from the ink industry.”
See full article at: Raw materials and the ink industry – More challenging times ahead – Flint Group.
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