MOSCOW (MRC) -- AOC (Collierville, Tennessee) has announced price rises with immediate effect, or as contracts allow, for its entire epoxy vinyl ester (EVE) and unsaturated polyester resins (UPR) portfolio sold in the EAME region, citing continued increases in raw materials, logistics, and packaging costs, reported Chemweek.
Prices for its EVE products have been hiked by EUR450/metric ton (USD544/metric ton), with its UPR product portfolio prices rising by EUR350/metric ton. “The pricing of styrene, maleic anhydride, liquid epoxy resin, and other key raw materials has seen continued increases over the past months following outages across the globe and force majeure declarations in Europe,” says Fons Harbers, EAME vice president/marketing and sales at AOC. “Also, logistics and packaging costs have been increasing steadily. This leaves us no choice but to raise the prices of our products as a result,” he says.
AOC raised its prices mid-February this year for the same products, for similar reasons, following previous increases announced in January 2021 and December 2020.
As MRC informed earlier, in October 2020, AOC, Kaprain and Spolchemie announced they had reached agreement on AOC acquiring the Unsaturated Polyester Resin (UPR) manufacturing operations located at the Spolchemie site in Usti nad Labem (Czech Republic). This footprint extension will allow AOC to further improve service and logistics to its customers in Central/ Eastern Europe as well as in Germany, and will make new products (e.g. based on recycled PET) available for customers around Europe.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, overall estimated PET consumption in Russia was 71,830 tonnes in December 2020, up by 8% year on year. Russia's PET consumption in all sectors (injection moulding, fibers/filaments, films) exceeded the level of 2019 by 17%, totalling 717,310 tonnes.
MRC