Summit Notebook

High commodities’ costs have been much on the minds of almost all of the executives at this year’s Reuters Manufacturing Summit.

For Timken Co Chief Executive Jim Griffith, the question is one the diversified company is addressing on a real-time basis and one it has gained some pricing power with its customers.

Griffith, speaking at the second day of the summit, said that while higher commodities costs help one side of their business, they can also be a detriment to the other side — and that’s where they need to raise some prices.

Timken, a maker of bearings and specialty steel that still gets a large portion of its revenues from the automobile industry, said it was looking for some low double-digit price hikes from certain customers to offset rising costs that they face.

Griffith was one of the featured speakers at this year’s summit, held in our Chicago offices. The summit continues through Thursday and is followed in two weeks with the Reuters Global Mining and Steel Summit held in New York, London and Sydney, Australia.