Worldwide production losses in the petrochemical industry – especially for styrene – have forced insulation manufacturer Austrotherm (Waldegg / Austria; www.austrotherm.at) to not only increase prices, but also restrict deliveries to customers in Germany.

In the “exceptional situation that has not been experienced so far with this intensity”, with a sudden increase in the prices of primary products, the specialist for EPS and XPS boards in Germany plans to raise prices for its XPS boards by an estimated 16%, as of 8 April 2021. This is probably because it is not possible to predict how the prices of styrene, among others, will develop by then. Austrotherm will announce the exact terms only on 8 April. For the first time, the measure will also apply to deliveries agreed for longer periods. In Austria, Austrotherm’s home country, price increases of 10% are planned for both EPS and XPS boards, from 12 April 2021.

In order to be able to serve customers at least halfway in the face of an apparently dramatic increase in incoming orders, and “exploding delivery times” for primary products, the German subsidiary, which focuses on XPS products, stopped taking orders for a week. Only from calendar week 12 can “possible contingent order quantities for the next months” be stated. Austrotherm Dämmstoffe (Wittenberge / Germany; www.austrotherm.de) does not expect the situation to improve significantly before the middle of the year.