Survey Shows Manufacturing Prices Are Headed Up

A spring 2011 survey of 318 U.S. CFOs and senior controllers, 50 of whom were manufacturers, shows there are serious concerns about inflation with 66% saying their company intends to raise the sales price for their goods over the next six months, up from 35% six months earlier.

96% of the CFOs identified pricing concerns with raw materials such as cotton, metals, and petroleum-based products, up from 62% six months earlier and 58% identified concerns about energy costs, up from 33% six months earlier.  With such sharp increases in commodity prices, manufacturers felt they had no choice but to pass along the increases to their customers.  Efficiency improvements have helped to keep costs down over the past three years, but the manufacturers believed they could not drive down their costs enough to absorb the higher raw materials costs.

47% intended to increase staffing which is good news and up from 18% six months earlier.  58% were optimistic about their own company over the next six months which is also up from 35% earlier.

As we always say at ACS Industrial, repair your manufacturing and industrial equipment whenever possible to keep costs down.  Buying new is almost always more costly.  Drive repairs, servo motor repairs, encoder repairs, power supply repairs, monitor repairs….these are all ways to save, especially when you can expect to be paying more for raw materials in the near future.

The referenced survey was completed by Grant Thornton LLP., the U.S. member firm of Grant Thornton International Ltd.