Wexham Springs, UK, 21 February 2011 – Sun Chemical Europe today announced that a 5% price increase will be implemented for its Sheetfed products effective March 1st 2011. Critical shortages for raw materials such as acrylic acid and gum rosin are affecting the entire print industry. These shortages together with unprecedented raw material cost increases have necessitated this price change.

The cost of certain key raw materials has increased by over 200% from the start of 2009 with further increases expected. Vegetable oils are a major cost driver for all sheetfed inks and the supply and cost of linseed, rapeseed and soybean oil are very complex and volatile. Prices are driven by several factors such as the potential harvests, value of the dollar, crude oil prices and bio-diesel production. These factors currently indicate that vegetable oil prices will remain high compared to 2010.

Material supply figures and costs predicted by the industry for 2011 have been greatly surpassed with much larger increases passed on to ink manufacturers than expected.

Felipe Mellado, Chief Marketing Officer of Sun Chemical, comments: “the print industry is under tremendous pressure to mitigate the effect of increasing raw material costs. Sun Chemical’s purchasing, technical and manufacturing teams are working very hard to ensure that our flexibility of sourcing allows us to minimise disruption, but it has become necessary to implement price changes to maintain our commitment to customer service, world-class quality products and continuous innovation.”