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Consumers will suffer another strain on their wallets with fridge, microwave and dishwasher prices set to rise.
One of New Zealand's biggest selling whiteware manufacturers, Fisher & Paykel Appliances, said yesterday that rising steel prices would force it to increase the price of its whiteware by up to 10 per cent in September.
Other whiteware manufacturers are tipped to follow suit.
The increase will follow the rise of other household expenses, such as petrol, food and mortgage interest rates.
Fisher & Paykel said world steel prices had risen by up to 70 per cent, although the company had managed to reduce its suppliers' increases to 15 to 35 per cent.
At a briefing yesterday, where it reported a 14 per cent fall in its bottom-line profit to $54.2 million, chief executive John Bongard doubted any competitor would be able to hold prices down. "Price increases will be the order of the day in the industry."
Consumer New Zealand chief executive Sue Chetwin said it was possible other whiteware manufacturers would soon increase their prices.
"I guess the difficult thing is consumers are keeping their hands in their pockets at the moment."
There was a danger that people would put more items on hire purchase and get further into debt, Ms Chetwin said.
"Some of the retailers will be offering those sorts of credit deals to people, and they should be careful of that. You can already see there has been an increase of people getting into trouble with repayments on things like electronics and whiteware."
Ms Chetwin said if price was an issue, consumers could find the institute's annual Appliance Reliability Survey helpful. The institute's magazine, to be printed next week, questioned nearly 10,000 people about appliances they had used in the past five years. It asked how often they needed repairing and what went wrong, and compared the brands.
F&P dishwashers were rated as the least reliable and its washing machines, clothes dryers and fridge freezers were average.
The New Zealand Manufacturers and Exporters Association chief executive, John Walley, said there was "no doubt" the whiteware price rise would carry across the industry.
"Just take five minutes to look at the commodity price index on the London Metal Exchange and that'll show you straight away all steels, non-ferrous metals, oil, you name it, it's going up in price. It puts New Zealand in the worst possible place of inflation and no growth.
"Clearly food prices have seen significant rises. Clearly petrol at the pump is facing significant rises ... At some point the Reserve Bank is going to loosen monetary policy and at that point we can expect to see the exchange rate fall sharply and things will cost even more money."
- ADDITIONAL REPORTING: NZPA
