Marijn Dekkers

Bayer suggested there was room to lift prices at its high-tech plastics and chemicals business this year to counter soaring raw material costs that squeezed first quarter margins.The diversified healthcare group's MaterialScience division, global market leader in polycarbonate plastics used in blu-ray discs and car lights, lowered its outlook last month as a result of the soaring costs of petrochemicals such as benzene.But on Friday the unit's top executive, Patrick Thomas, told Reuters it had leeway to combat the problem by raising prices."We're in markets where you can recover as long as the supply-demand balance is at appropriate level," Thomas said in an interview. "The elasticity in the market place is sufficient.""The real concern would be if high benzene prices were to structurally make our materials uncompetitive. That's not true."The unit, which also makes chemicals for insulation foam, constitutes the higher-margin chemicals business that remained after Bayer spun off what is...

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