Fears of further ink cost increases will accompany a stark warning on the “ongoing raw material availability crisis”.
In a statement today, president of Flint Group’s commercial, publication and sheetfed inks division Tony Lord expresses his continued concern over the rising cost and reduced availability of raw materials for the ink industry.
“Along with many other suppliers, Flint CPS has been faced with cost increases across the entirety of its supply chain,” he says. “2021 has been a challenging year for manufacturers across the commercial and packaging print supply chain, with increased raw material costs influenced by both material and transport availability.
“The stark increase in the cost of raw materials for ink manufacturing has already had a dramatic impact on our industry, and there seems to be no end to the ongoing raw material availability crisis.”
Lord says Flint “worked with its customer base” during the first half of 2021 to address challenging market conditions. “We were hopeful that moving towards the end of 2021, some stability would have returned to the market place.
“Unfortunately, Flint CPS is yet to see any improvements in the availability of raw materials which, coupled with the strains on global transport and logistics, continues to drive costs upwards.”
Operational and procurement teams were working to mitigate multiple increases being imposed on the business, but Lord says as costs continue to increase, “our business will not be able to absorb them in their entirety”.