Rohm and Haas announce price increases

'The costs of key raw materials - such as propylene, ethylene, methanol, as well as other raw materials like tin - have remained persistently high,' said Pierre Brondeau, executive vice president in charge of specialty materials. 'Earlier in the year, there were strong indications that raw material prices would peak around mid-year, and then trail off during the second half of 2007. Given these expectations, we did whatever we could to use internal controls to mitigate the impact of the cost increases to Rohm and Haas, and selectively sought price increases in extreme conditions. 'However, raw material prices have not come down. In fact, they have continued to increase and have remained persistently high, with no real relief expected in the near future. To date, these increases have added more than $100 million to our raw material costs in total. Under these conditions, our only choice is to seek product price increases.' Brondeau continued, 'I have directed each business segment in each geographic region to pursue the appropriate price increase with their customers, based on the escalation of raw materials and delivered costs for the products. We will be fair and reasonable with our customers, and know we can count on them for the same.'