The 2018 North American Top 20 Ink Report

After a relatively stable period for key raw material ingredients, the past year has seen rising prices and pressure on availability for materials, driven by environmental and supply issues. This, in turn, has led major ink manufacturers to announce their own price increases. In the past three months, Sun Chemical, Flint Group, Siegwerk and hubergroup have announced significant price increases for inks. The industry has seen the following increases:

Sun Chemical cited higher carbon black, oil, and pigment costs as it announced price increases on offset inks, coatings and consumables beginning Feb. 15, 2018 across North America.

Sun Chemical increased flexible packaging products pricing by high single digits, driven by higher raw material costs. The company pointed to production and environmental restrictions on key materials, particularly in China, as well as TiO2.

Flint Group’s CPS Inks division (Commercial, Publication & Sheetfed Inks) announced that it will implement a global price increase of up to 9% on offset and publication gravure inks, coatings and pressroom consumables, effective March 1, 2018. The company noted that higher raw material and regulatory costs have led to this increase.

Flint Group Packaging raised prices globally as of Jan. 1, 2018.

Siegwerk announced price increases for packaging ink and varnishes in EMEA in December 2017, and in North and South America and Asia in February 2018. The company also raised prices on publication gravure inks in February 2018.

hubergroup announced that it will raise prices for all inks and coatings by 8%, effective with shipments in North America and South America beginning Feb. 12, 2018.

As these companies noted in their announcements, this is likely to be a continuing challenge for everyone in the ink supply chain, and we will likely to see more of this in the near future, whether it is announced or not.