September 26: World leading tinplate manufacturer ArcelorMittal Packaging Europe today issued a warning to the canmaking business that prices for its products in Europe could rise by at least €50 per tonne in 2008.
In an exclusive interview, chief executive Gil Perrot and vice president sales & marketing Guillaume de Formanoir told The Canmaker that ArcelorMittal Packaging Europe would have to recover the “substantial and continuous increases in the cost of raw materials and energy used to produce steel for packaging”.
Without revealing how high the price increases will be, they went into detail about the cost increases, which they said had resulted in ArcelorMittal losing €50 per tonne at current prices.
“There is a fundamental need to increase prices,” Perrot said.
“The rise of the raw material costs since 2005 has continued in 2007 at a level never achieved before,” he said. “The LME price of tin has literally exploded to exceed US$15,000 per tonne, that is a 100 percent increase compared with January 2005. The cost of iron ore is exceeding $80 a tonne and scrap at €241 per tonne have respectively have increases by +30 percent and +27 percent over the same period.”
