Echoing concerns expressed early in March by the French Plastic and Flexible Packaging Association Elipso (Paris; www.elipso.org) – see Plasteurope.com of 09.03.2012 – Germany’s packaging producers association Industrievereinigung Kunststoffverpackungen (IK, Bad Homburg; www.kunststoffverpackungen.de) has warned that there is no end in sight to the upward price spiral. In Q1 alone, IK says, raw material prices have risen by more than 30% and producers have announced additional increases for April.

The price crunch has converters worried, as indicated by the association’s latest economic trend survey, which showed that more than 80% of respondents expect further feedstock price hikes in Q2. More than 60% of IK members complained about raw material shortages, while 43% said they had received at least one force majeure (FM) announcement. IK director Ulf Kelterborn expressed doubts about some of these FMs, questioning their legal base and pointing out that some announcements actually refer to technical outages where no outside influence is visible.

Despite these feedstock fears, IK’s economic trend also shows that companies are optimistic about the economic developments in Q2, with 30% expecting better turnover and 52% predicting the current situation to remain unchanged. Respondents also said they expected exports to improve over Q1.