“Our initial and ongoing efforts to address these challenges have been focused on resisting increases, improving our productivity, and aggressively pursuing cost avoidance and savings opportunities,” said Joe Salley, President and CEO. “However, the speed and magnitude of recent cost escalations make it impossible for us to maintain our current pricing.
”Over the past year we have witnessed the dramatic acceleration of a trend that began around 2002, which transformed a twenty-year pattern of global commodity price deflation into one of long-term commodity price inflation.
“While this pattern extends broadly across almost all commodity factor inputs, it has recently been most disruptive in the price of oil, which drives the cost of our petrochemical-based raw materials, our energy and our freight.”
Salley added: ”We are well aware of the many pressures our customers face, even under normal circumstances, and we take this decision reluctantly but in recognition of the new global economic reality in which we are all living.”
