JARN
Following Mitsubishi Electric Corp. (Melco) and Toshiba Carrier, which announced their commercial AC price increases in August, Sanyo Electric Co., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Hitachi Appliance also announced their commercial AC price increases. Price increases of around 15% were officially announced in turn by Hitachi, MHI and Sanyo. They judged that, due to the copper, aluminum and other material price hikes, they cannot could not absorb procurement cost increases through rationalization alone. Daikin has not yet expressed an intention to increase its commercial AC prices. Steps the company will take from now here on are worthy of watching.
To enhance commercial packaged air conditioner (PAC) production efficiency, MHI has decided to transfer production facilities to Thailand and China. Judging that "since material price hikes are a phenomenon occurring globally, it is too optimistic to expect that our production cost will drop simply by shifting our production facilities to Asia. The material cost -pushincreases can no longer be absorbed with corporate efforts alone," MHI decided to raise commercial PAC prices ahead of competitors.
On the other hand, Daikin said, "To lead the industry, we requested a 10% price increase twice in 2004 and 2005 at the anticipated risk of our share drops. So, we'll not easily be able to follow our competitors here."