By Joshua Kirby
BASF said it is raising prices sharply for more of its products, adding to a rash of price hikes among chemical makers as raw-materials costs soar due to the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran.
The German group said Wednesday it would lift prices of commodity amines in Europe by up to 30%, with some price tags rising even more markedly. Amines are used as solvents and catalysts in an array of industries, from pharmaceuticals to personal care and agrochemicals.
"These price increases are in response to the substantial increases in raw-material prices, energy and logistic costs due to the military conflict in the Middle East," said BASF, one of the world's largest chemists.
The U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran that escalated at the end of last month has sent energy prices soaring as Tehran maintains an effective blockade across the Strait of Hormuz on the Persian Gulf, a key shipping route for Middle Eastern oil and gas. Brent crude, a global benchmark, eased a little to $97.36 a barrel Wednesday amid more emollient remarks from President Trump, but remains well above the levels seen before the escalation. Hydrocarbons and their derived petrochemicals are key to the production of many plastics and chemical products.
The Iran war has "caused a double-whammy for global petrochemical production," wrote Scott Lincicome, vice-president of the Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies.
"The longer the conflict drags on, the more likely backup supplies run dry, supply chains grind to a halt, and contracts get rewritten, locking in higher prices as the new normal and seriously denting global growth," Lincicome said.
BASF's decision to lift prices of amines comes a week after it said it would raise prices by up to nearly a third, or in some cases more, for products in its home-care, industrial & institutional cleaning and industrial formulators segments in Europe.
That followed a warning from Germany's chemicals association that the war in the Middle East had already begun to take its toll on the industry's supply chain, with an immediate spike in oil and gas prices spreading to other raw materials vital to chemical production.
Another German chemicals supplier, Lanxess, said this week it was raising prices across a range of its products by as much as 50% in response to higher materials and energy costs. U.S. chemical giant Dow said Tuesday that it would raise prices of polyethylene--a key component of plastic products made from natural gas or naphtha--by twice as much as previously announced. Germany's Wacker Chemie said last week it was raising prices for its silicone products, adding to planned price hikes at its polymers division.
European chemicals companies may be benefiting from improved scope to raise prices brought about by the war's disruption to global supply, analysts at J.P. Morgan wrote in a note to clients Wednesday.
"This is setting up potentially material near-term earnings upside across the sector, albeit with magnitude and duration dependent on how long disruptions persist and on demand elasticity," the analysts said.
The new round of price hikes will be implemented immediately, or as existing contracts allow, BASF said.
Write to Joshua Kirby at joshua.kirby@wsj.com; @joshualeokirby
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 25, 2026 13:26 ET (17:26 GMT)
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