From 1 December 2021, Profilium will be implementing a price rise across its product range. Updated pricing is shown on the web shop.
General Price Rise commences 1 December
Dear Customers,
As you many of your are aware, the COVID-19 pandemic has seen a range of challenges to global supply chains. Profilium have been battling for over 12 months just to get regular deliveries of stock from Alusic, the manufacturer of the t-slot profiles and accessories who are located in northern Italy and were badly affected since the first wave of COVID impacts.
Impacts associated with the pandemic continue to be a problem in 2021 and are forecast to continue into 2022. The primary issues that are affecting Profilium are the global rise in the cost of raw aluminium and the significant cost increases in sea-freight and air-freight deliveries.
Global aluminium prices continue to fluctuate, but are constantly around 200% higher than pre-pandemic levels. Importantly, sea-freight costs have increased around 400% for freight delivered ex-works, Italy and around 300% for air-freight shipments EXW Italy.
On 1 June 2021, Alusic pushed through a general price rise for all new orders which has coincided with the sharpest increases in freight. While we have absorbed these cost rises until now, it is no longer sustainable for us to subsidise the cost increases we face. Despite riding out some of these increases in 2020 and 2021, ultimately we have to pass on these cost increases via a general price increases.
As a result, new pricing will become effective from 1 December 2021. We have not taken this decision lightly and the price rises represent the first general increase since September 2018. We apologise that this price rise has been necessary and we have endeavoured to minimise the increases where possible, including by reducing our normal selling margins. This is especially the case for some of our most popular and highest selling profiles such as the 20 series and 40 series of profiles, but applies across the range.
If you are a Commercial/ Business customer and you are looking to place regular orders or a single bulk order, please contact us to discuss potential discounts off the RRP listed on our web store.
Future forecast
In recent discussions with Alusic, we have been advised that further price rises are highly likely in 2022. This is because the core issue of restricted supply of raw aluminium is predicted to remain a problem for much of 2022. As an example, since the start of the pandemic, Alusic are only receiving less than 10% by tonnage of their monthly orders of profile – there simply isn’t enough aluminium for them to produce the stock to meet demand. This has course been a major contributor to our stock shortages in 2020 and 2021 and is also fuelling price increases.
These challenges have required a small change in Alusic’s strategy. Many of the lesser used profiles are being made a low priority for delivery, which is to ensure that the most commonly used profiles are in greater supply. Pricing for these less used profiles will continue to rise given the reduced volumes being produced. While these profiles may become even more expensive, it does mean that the most commonly used profiles can be prioritised for production and delivery and it means the price rises for those profiles may be relatively less.
Finally, the sea-freight and air-freight cost increases have not abated. A global shortage of 20ft and 40ft containers in circulation is driving some cost increases, but locally in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, port-side congestion and industrial disputes and rising fuel costs are also dramatically driving up the cost of freight. Hopefully as global air plane movements increase, the costs for air-freight will also start to come down.
In summary, for 2022 we have been told to expect:
- Continued risk of stock shortages and reduced deliveries of profile
- Continued price rises for all profile and accessories
- Even higher price rises and shortages for some of the more ‘exotic’ or less frequently used profiles
Impacts for Black Anodised Profiles
Alusic does not have any black anodised profiles standard in its range. All of its profiles are only come standard with clear anodising (silver finish). The black anodised profiles we are offering in Australia are a custom order purely for the Australian market. While those profiles we are offering with black anodising are amongst the most popular profile sizes in the range and should be being produced in Italy with silver anodising, it remains to be seen whether the relatively small volumes we are requesting to be anodised black will be acceptable given the overall shortages.
There is a risk that black anodised profiles will be in short-supply for much of 2022.
