Chr. Hansen Announces 1.5-3% Price Increase for its Cheese Coagulants
05 Dec 2013 --- From January 1st, 2014, new prices for Chr. Hansen coagulants will be implemented. Prices will increase by 1.5-3% (depending on product group) to reflect cost increase of energy, labor and raw materials Chr. Hansen coagulants include products like CHY-MAX M, CHY-MAX, HANNILASE, THERMOLASE, NATUREN and others.
These price changes will affect all coagulants, in all regions and areas, with the exception of existing contracts which will be carried out at the contract price.
Knud Vindfeldt, Executive VP Cultures & Enzymes and Member of the Executive Board told FoodIngredientsFirst: “During the last 3-5 years, we haven’t increased the prices on our coagulants, but we have now come to the conclusion that this is no longer sustainable, as the input costs for raw materials, energy and other indirect costs have gone up.”
“At the same time our customers expect that we continue to invest in innovation. In order to do that we needed to do something to protect our margins with these cost increases. We have a normal cost increase at the level of inflation or around that, but in coagulants, since prices have been stable for the last 3-5 years, we felt that we needed to include coagulants into this,” he added.
Vindfeldt said that customers will understand this, as Chr. Hansen is judged on its’ ability to provide value for them and for bringing innovations into the market. “In coagulants, cheese customers are looking for products that increase yield. For example, we have launched Chymax-M, which has a higher specificity towards clotting the enzymes, which also breaks down milk enzymes in a better way and leads to new functionalities fore mozzarella cheese producers etc. It’s not often that you see new coagulants, but we have had a few,” he concluded.
