Proctor And Gamble To Raise Prices Of Popular Goods Citing Higher-Than-Expected Inflation

Procter and Gamble said Tuesday they are raising prices on a variety of popular home goods due to a sharp increase in freight transportation and raw materials costs.

The company behind Tide detergent and Gillette razors announced it would increase prices for beauty, oral care and grooming products, like razors, according to The Wall Street Journal. Procter & Gamble (P&G) announced in July that it would charge more for consumer staples like diapers and toilet paper.

P&G anticipates that the price increase, coupled with high product demand, will offset the increased costs of transportation and raw materials, according to the WSJ.

“We do not anticipate any easing of costs,” P&G Finance Chief Andre Schulten said in a media call, according to Reuters. “We expect pricing to be a larger contributor to sales growth in coming quarters as more of our price increases become effective,” Schulten continued.

P&G now expects to spend $2.1 billion more on transportation and raw material for the fiscal year ending June 2022, the WSJ reported. The company anticipated a $1.9 billion increase in July.

This spending increase comes as P&G works to make sure products are in stock at stores while consumer demand remains high, Schulten said, according to the WSJ. The company has hired backup suppliers, invested in alternative shipping routes to dodge bottlenecks and limited how much each retailer can stockpile at once.

The Consumer Price Index increased 0.4% in September, bringing the country’s inflation indicator’s year-over-year increase to 5.4%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced Wednesday. September’s figure is the largest year-over-year increase since January 1991, according to CNBC.

Meanwhile, U.S. retail sales increased 0.7% in September amid the growing inflation and supply chain disruptions, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Friday. Sales were up 13.9% compared to September 2020.