Purac announces lactic acid price hike
lactates, gluconic acid, gluconates and lactitol.
The company said that the increases would vary from between five and ten per cent depending upon product category, and could vary from region to region.
Purac produces most of its basic products by fermentation on basis of carbohydrates obtained from sugar cane, sugar beet, corn and wheat. The company said that production costs have increased substantially due to higher costs for carbohydrates and energy.
Energy costs for example have doubled in the last 12 to 24 month and the costs for carbohydrates have gone up by 40 to 60 per cent.
The surging costs for carbohydrates is explained by the restructuring of the sugar regime in the European Union and the strongly increasing demand for carbohydrates to produce bio-ethanol.
"After several years of increasing costs for raw materials and energy it is no longer possible to absorb these costs increases by process manufacturing improvements," said the company in a statement.
"The recent sharp cost increases for energy and carbohydrates makes it now necessary to pass the costs increases to the market prices of the products."
Purac's announcement follows a raft of recent food ingredient price hikes. National Starch Food Innovation for example recently announced a price increase in Europe on a range of products including food and texturising starches.
Prices have increased by 8 to 10 per cent as of 15 November 2006.
DSM Nutritional Products also revealed its plans to increase prices of its food and pharma-grade vitamins, premixes and citric acid. This is the second price increase for DSM's vitamins this year. Vitamin and carotenoid prices went up as of April 1, with the scale of the increase that time communicated directly to customers.
And BASF also recently increased prices of its food grade vitamin A and B2 by 12 and 20 per cent respectively. The German chemical group said that worldwide prices for vitamin B2 are going up by around 20 per cent, but the precise increase depends on the grade of product.
Purac is a global market leader in lactic acid and lactates and a leading supplier in gluconic acid and gluconates. The company is predominantly active in products for the food and nutrition, meat, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.
