Recently, affected by the situation in the Middle East, many chemical enterprises have successively raised the prices of their silicone product lines.

Silicone is an extremely widely used chemical product, and the price increase of upstream products will also be transmitted to the entire industrial chain, and industries including cosmetics are expected to be hit by the price hike.

On March 24, Germany's Wacker Chemie suddenly announced that it would raise the prices of its silicone products starting from April 1. In a statement, the company stated that the price increase was due to the military conflict in the Middle East severely disrupting the global supply chain, leading to a sharp rise in energy, raw material and logistics costs.

First Financial reporters learned that Wacker Silicones is one of the world's largest producers of silicone products, supplying more than 2,800 highly specialized innovative silicone products. These products are widely used in automotive, construction, chemical, cosmetics, medical technology, energy and electronics, papermaking and textiles and other fields. In 2025, Wacker Chemie's silicone business contributed about half of the group's revenue.

Wacker Chemie did not announce the specific range of the new price adjustment. However, it stated that different products will have different price adjustment ranges, and the sales team will communicate with customers in the near future to provide specific information about the products and business.

Wacker Chemie is not the first silicone manufacturer to adjust its prices. Earlier this month, the Consumer Solutions business unit of Dow Chemical Company issued a notice to its partners in Greater China, announcing that it would raise product prices starting from March 27th. The core business of this business unit is mainly silicone products. The company expects the price increase range of this round to be between 5% and 15%.

The trend of rising silicone prices had already emerged before the outbreak of the Middle East conflict. In November last year, Dow Chemical had already raised the prices of several core silicone products by 10% to 20%; in January this year, Dow Chemical also raised the prices of its products for the high-performance construction business by 5% to 10%.

Wacker Chemie also announced at the end of January this year that it would raise the prices of its main silicone products by at least 25% starting from February 1 to cope with the sharp rise in commodity prices.

Silicone products include silicone oil, silicone emulsions, silicone resins, silicone elastomers, sealants, silanes, silane-modified polymers and fumed silica, among others. Taking silicone oil as an example, this product is used in daily chemicals such as shampoo and personal care products.

Recently, affected by the price increase of upstream raw materials, some cosmetics companies have announced price hikes. La Prairie, a high-end skincare brand under Germany's cosmetics giant Beiersdorf AG, said it will raise the prices of some products in the Chinese market in April this year, with an increase ranging from 3% to 5%. The prices of La Prairie's products range from several thousand yuan to over ten thousand yuan.

Regarding the current round of price hikes for organic silicon, a senior R&D researcher in the chemical industry told CBN reporters that since the beginning of this year, the price of organic silicon has been rising due to factors such as exchange rates, and the situation in the Middle East has exacerbated the cost increase. He also said that cosmetics may take the opportunity to raise prices, although the cost of cosmetic raw material formulas accounts for a relatively small proportion of the total product cost.

Although the rise in raw material prices will definitely affect the cost of cosmetics to a certain extent, for example, the costs of emulsifiers and oil bases in cream products are affected. It should be noted that the cost of cosmetic formulations is sometimes even lower than the packaging cost, so the impact caused by raw materials is not significant. Expenses such as marketing are the real big-ticket items." The above industry expert said.

He believes that for detergent and other cleaning-type daily chemical products, the impact of raw material costs will be even greater. "The main raw material for the surfactants on the surface of these cleaning-type products is petroleum, and the rise in oil prices will definitely lead to an increase in costs.

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