KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 (Bernama) -- Henkel Adhesive Technologies, a business unit of Henkel, announced today a price increase of 10-20 per cent for various grades of industrial adhesives that are affected by the rising costs of petrochemical feedstock-based raw materials.
The price increase will be implemented in Asia with immediate effect or as existing contracts allow, the company said in a statement.
"Higher petrochemical feedstock-based raw material prices have driven a spate of adhesive price increases across our industry.
"We have been trying our best to cope with these upstream cost increases through improving our internal efficiency.
"However, we have reached a point where product price increase is unavoidable for us to continue delivering the same high quality of product and service standards that our customers expect from Henkel," Jan-Dirk Auris, President of Henkel Asia Pacific was quoted as saying in the statement issued in Singapore.
The company said between January 2009 and February 2010, prices of key raw materials kept increasing dramatically, growing beyond the high levels seen in 2008.
Some petrochemical feedstock-based raw materials such as propylene, benzene, and butadiene have shown sizeable increases of 202 per cent, 239 per cent and 335 per cent, respectively, in January 2010 compared with January 2009, the company said.
Together with naphtha and ethylene, these raw materials impact adhesive products including hotmelt, polyurethane, acrylic, water-based and so on.
Henkel's adhesive technologies business sector serves a wide range of customer groups with a comprehensive range of technologies comprising adhesives, sealants and surface treatment products.