Raw Material Shortages Affect Ink Prices

WOODBRIDGE, N.J.—In order to help printers and converters understand why their ink prices may be on the rise, the National Association of Printing Ink Manufacturers, Inc. (NAPIM) is issuing a series of bulletins and press releases that provide insight into the raw material printing ink market supply chain.

This press release is an update to the January 31, 2011 press release and covers the availability of critical raw materials likely used in the inks that printers’ purchase in all of the major printing processes – lithographic, gravure, flexographic and inkjet.

Availability, driven by capacity and demand from competing regions and industries, continues to be the dominant factor on how much product any one manufacturer can obtain and at what cost. Some of the key raw materials causing price increases include: rosin, acrylic acid, carbon black, titanium dioxide, nitrocellulose, crude oil and natural gas, vegetable oils, and colored organic pigments.

Rosin

In all regions rosin remains in tight supply. In North America tall oil rosin (TOR) is very tight and under severe upward price pressure due to the global demand for TOR (driven by replacement demand of Gum Rosin and bio diesel demand in Europe) and has now hit price levels nearly equal to Gum Rosin. Although we are recently seeing some price stability, prices remain at an all-time highs. Since January 2010 the cost of rosin is 3 times more expensive and will likely remain at very high price levels for the foreseeable future. We are beginning to see some changes away from rosin to alternatives but the alternatives also have supply and price issues associated with them.

North America has moved from a net importer to a net exporter, a number of suppliers of rosin based materials have decided to focus their efforts away from the graphic arts industry.