Cabot expects supply concerns to bolster carbon black pricing

Boston, Massachusetts – Cabot Corp. expects to raise carbon black pricing for the contract year 2024 amid 'unchanged' market fundamentals in Europe and the US.

“A percentage of our business has multi-year agreements with the second year [seeing] price increases,” president and CEO Sean Keohane told market analysts. 

“Those price increases are kind of the baseline for the rest of our 2024 contracts and should really set the level of price increases,” Keohane added on the 5 Aug earnings call.

Meanwhile, although supply-side capacity remains 'structurally unchanged', Keohane said sanctions would likely further restrict Russian exports to Europe by June 2024.

“So, the supply-picture remains very important for customers, and I think that getting supply-reliability is going to be pretty critical for them,” he added.

Cabot's leader went on to note a continuing rise in environmental-mitigation costs in the carbon black industry, stating that those costs have to be recovered.