Important raw materials such as steel, rubber and semiconductors remain scarce.
Industry and trade are concerned with that.
Consumers too have to be prepared for rising prices.
Berlin - Whether tinplate for cans, semiconductors, timber or jam jars: The prices for numerous products continue to rise significantly in many areas in view of the continuing shortage of raw materials.
Industrial intermediate products such as wood, steel or plastic are scarce.
Industry and trade are under corresponding pressure - and an end to the price increases is not in sight, experts warn.
"Empty warehouses, limited supply and persistently high demand lead to long-term overuse of the raw material markets," says Danilo Zatta from the Horváth consultancy.
The President of the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Peter Adrian, speaks of a "big problem".
An overview of the currently scarce raw materials - and answers to the question of which products the end consumer could feel the price increase.
stole
For years, Europe's steel industry complained about sales problems because of cheap Asian imports. It's over. At Thyssenkrupp, Europe's largest steel manufacturer, there is talk of a "steel bottleneck in Europe". The result: steel became significantly more expensive. The steep price increase “exceeded even our very optimistic expectations,” says David Varga from Bankhaus Metzler. The higher steel prices are not only affecting construction, the automotive industry or mechanical engineering. Relatively simple products such as tin cans also rose in price. The Federal Association of the Fruit, Vegetable and Potato Processing Industry (BOGK) recently complained about a 30 to 80 percent surcharge for tin cans and lids.
Even a lack of packaging made of tinplate - that is, thinly rolled steel - cannot be ruled out in the industry.
The supply situation is tense overall, says Sibylle Vollmer from the Metal Packaging Association.
However, the manufacturers could deliver the contractually agreed quantities.
Breweries are also following the development with concern.
According to Veltins boss Michael Huber, there are bottlenecks in the market for tinplate, which is indispensable for crown corks.
Veltins had secured the supply of crown caps in the long term.
glass
Tinplate for cans is not the only packaging material that has become more expensive.
There is a clear consumer trend * away from plastic and back to glass, and so the costs for canning and jam jars have also increased, according to the industry association BOGK.
So do consumers have to adjust to higher prices?
The answer from canned food producers is clear: the food processors could not absorb the rising costs on their own, because the corona crisis had depleted their financial reserves.
It is therefore difficult to imagine that the "upheavals will not ultimately also have an impact on consumer prices".
rubber
Even with car tires, consumers have to be prepared for higher costs, recently warned the Federal Association of Tire Trade and Vulcanization Crafts (BRV). It is assumed that in the coming months, for example when converting to winter tires, there will be “noticeable price increases” in all segments. Because the costs for raw materials, energy and logistics have increased. The tire retailer must “pass on price increases fully to private and commercial consumers”, said the chairman of the association, Stephan Helm.
The cost of natural rubber, one of the main materials used in tire production, has risen sharply. The mean value for the first half of the year was 57 percent above the previous year. And with the rise in oil prices, synthetic rubbers produced on a petrochemical basis would have become much more expensive. In addition, the industry is feeling the effects of rising container freight rates in world trade.
A strong recovery also started in rubber production after the Corona crisis.
If German rubber production collapsed by around 20 percent in 2020 due to the pandemic, production has been at pre-crisis level for a few months, reported the Association of the Chemical Industry (VCI).
At the same time, the demand is very high.
The VCI also believes that the prices for tires could rise.
However, the situation should ease again in the second half of the year.
wood
When it comes to wood, there is still an “exceptional situation”, which is due to disruptions in the supply chain and subsequent market distortions, as Denny Ohnesorge from the Main Association of the German Timber Industry puts it.
The demand in construction is high both domestically and abroad, with large quantities going to the USA.
As a result of Corona, the demand in the “do-it-yourself” area jumped, especially in the hardware stores.
According to the timber industry council, construction timber increased in price by 38.4 percent in May 2021 compared to the same month of the previous year.
By the end of the year, Ohnesorge expects the situation to ease slightly.
The consulting firm Horváth, on the other hand, expects a further price increase of up to a third for wood by the end of the year and refers to a survey of 1000 executives from manufacturing companies in Europe.
A spokesman for the Bauhaus hardware store chain says with regard to the purchase of materials by suppliers that there has been a “highly dynamic price development and longer delivery times”, especially for the raw material wood.
So far, Bauhaus has mostly been able to compensate for this - so the customer has only noticed a part of it.
"However, if the raw materials market remains so volatile in the future, there may be isolated price increases and delivery delays."
plastic
Manufacturers of plastic packaging report shortages of materials and higher costs due to corona disruptions in world trade and the consequences of force majeure - almost half of around 100 companies in Germany assessed the availability of raw materials as poor or very poor, as the Plastic Packaging Industry Association with reference to an industry survey in June reports.
The prices for raw materials have risen sharply since January - for widely used plastics, the polyolefins, by up to 80 percent.
For example, it is about plastic bags, food boxes and foils.
semiconductor
For many industries, semiconductors are a key component and thus a kind of raw material. For more than half a year, the shortage of important electronic components has been causing automakers worldwide to lose their rhythm. The shortage of semiconductors at VW, Daimler, BMW and other companies repeatedly causes production downtimes and, from the customer's point of view, extends the delivery times for new vehicles, sometimes considerably. Due to the corona-related collapse in demand in 2020, the corporations canceled large contingents of these chip components - in the current upswing, they are now missing the parts in abundance. Shifts were canceled, short-time work followed in individual plants, and hundreds of thousands of planned cars could not be manufactured on schedule.
Due to extreme weather conditions and fires, semiconductor companies in Japan and the USA also had more of their already limited capacities idle. In view of the scarce resources, the carmakers are currently making do with the fact that they prefer to equip more profitable models with the scarce parts - for example, VW and Daimler were recently able to report lavish profits in their daily business despite the crisis. According to experts, however, the shortage should continue well into the fourth quarter.
(dpa) * Merkur.de is part of IPPEN-MEDIA.
