Prices for LED TV and appliances such as refrigerator, washing machines are expected to go up by around 10 per cent from January next year on account of rise in costs of key input materials like copper, aluminium and steel and increase in ocean and air freights charges.Besides, prices of TV panels (Opencell) have also gone up by over two-folds due to short supply by the global vendors, while cost of plastic has also gone up due to rise in crude oil prices, said manufacturers.
Terming it as imminent and unavoidable, manufacturers such as LG, Panasonic and Thomson are going to increase the prices from January, however, Sony is still reviewing the situation and is yet to take a call on this.“We expect the increase in commodity prices to impact our product pricing in near future. I anticipate the prices to go up by 6-7 per cent in January itself and may go up to 10-11 per cent towards end of FY Q1,” said Panasonic India President & CEO Manish Sharma.
LG Electronics India is also going to increase the price of a minimum of 7 to 8 per cent across its products in the appliances category from January 1 next year.“From January, we are going to increase the price of 7-to 8 per cent on all products including TV, Washing Machine, refrigerator etc. There is an increase in raw material prices and metals as copper and aluminium. Moreover, crude oil prices have gone up, hence the cost of plastic materials have also gone up substantially,” said LG Electronics India VP-Home Appliances Vijay Babu.
While for Sony India, it’s still a ‘wait and watch’ situation and yet to take a final call on this but hinted that it is also moving in that directions.On being asked about the prices Sony India Managing Director Sunil Nayyar said: “Not yet. It is a wait and watch. We are watching the supply side, which is changing day by day. Its blurry situation and we have not decided as how much… Tendency is moving towards that situation.”The panel prices have edged up and the some of the other raw material costs also has gone up, specially for the TV, he added.
I reckon it with primarily with demand and supply situation. There is excess demand because of work from home and there is limited supply because factories were not running at full capacity and that has created a vacuum in the supply side and have pushed up the prices,” said Nayyar adding “it was a perfect storm as all thing came together disruption in supply, excessive demand and extraneous issues”.Prices of small screen sizes have a bigger issue for the industry and their prices have gone up significantly.
According to Nayyar: “It would not sustain for a long period but for the industry until the first half of the next year, the pressure would remain.”The Indian appliances and consumer electronics industry is largely dependent on global imports, mainly from China, for the sourcing of components and some of the finished goods.According to a joint report by CEAMA and Frost & Sullivan, the industry had a total market size of Rs 76,400 crore in 2018-19, in which Rs 32,200 crore was contributed from domestic manufacturing.
