Consumer durable firms may hike prices from June: Whirlpool

Consumer durable firms will have to increase prices of their products from June on rising input costs due to increasing oil prices and a depreciating rupee, home appliances maker Whirlpool of India said.

"On the cost side, right now, we are seeing a bit of turbulence...We do see the cost creeping up. Oil and rupee hit everyone and we do expect the industry to inch up prices as a response to that. We will move in line with the industry," Whirlpool of India managing director Sunil D'Souza told PTI.

On the quantum of hike, he said it would be difficult to estimate, but added that the industry would start hiking prices from June.

Imported raw materials account for quite a significant portion of the company's costs and with the rupee moving from about Rs 63.50 against the US dollar from about three months back to over Rs 67 at present, the cost is getting impacted, he said.

D'Souza noted that commodity prices started climbing from July 2017 onwards but had started plateauing.

"However, oil moving from USD 60 a barrel to USD 77-78 a barrel recently, will have a spiral inflationary impact on all commodities and business costs," he said.

D'Souza expects a healthy consumer demand in the current financial year, backed by a good GDP growth, rural electrification and good monsoon, and is targeting a double-digit volume growth.

The subsidiary of the US-based home appliances firm, Whirlpool, reported a 24 per cent growth in revenues in fiscal year 2017-18 at Rs 5,000 crore, and is targeting to be a billion-dollar company by 2020, according to him.

"We identified that we have more room to play and expand both at the mass and premium. The mass-end we have already started fixing (the gaps) quite a bit and the premium-end we have just about started and you will see significant traction on this," D'Souza said.

The company expects semi-urban areas areas to outpace the urban areas in terms of business growth, and is working on improving its distributional footprint there.