Flint to impose surcharge on publication products

Rising raw materials and energy costs will see inkmaker Flint Group apply a new surcharge to all its publication products from 1 March, which will remain until market volatility eases.

The surcharge come just a week after Flint Group Packaging said it will increase the prices of all the packaging products sold by its Flexible Packaging, Paper and Board, and Narrow Web business units, and three weeks after it said there would be rises in its Offset Packaging Solutions products.

Flint said the volatile market is causing it to have to pay more for its raw materials and energy to guarantee supply, and this has led to the need for the surcharge.

Tony Lord, president of Flint Group Commercial Publication Web Division, said, "The first responsibility of a supplier is to meet its obligations to its customers for provision of required volumes to maintain the integrity of the supply chain. To meet this requirement we have been successful in responding to the post pandemic’s unprecedented disruption in both global raw material and energy markets by ensuring both product and energy availability to meet our customers’ demands. This has, however, been at previously unparalleled price levels across our entire portfolio of raw materials and manufacturing locations".

Flint had been hoping the markets would calm down, but this has not happened. Lord said, "Regrettably the hoped for stabilisation in both raw material availability and pricing has failed to materialise so far in 2022 with products remaining scarce and their pricing continuing to escalate accordingly. This, coupled with the exponential increase in energy tariffs, has created a situation where current selling price levels for our products are simply not sustainable. To respond to this sudden rise in costs we feel the sensible approach is to avoid a general price increase, and apply a monthly surcharge whilst awaiting further market developments.

"To this end, effective for deliveries from 1 March, surcharges to recover these recent cost increases will be applied across our entire publication ink portfolio so that we can maintain supply to our customers".

Lord continued, "It is of course a matter of deep regret this surcharge is needed and we understand the difficult printing markets that currently prevail and can assure all of our valued customers that as the situation normalises, we will seek to reflect this development by reducing or eliminating the surcharge applied.”

Business of every type are facing real supply chain issues, with print not exempted. Paper costs are rising, supply is tightening, and shipping remains a major problem.