D&L sees potential supply challenges as war drags on

The Philippine Star

March 26, 2026 | 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines — More than the soaring prices of products, D&L Industries Inc., the country’s largest producer of oleochemicals and specialty plastics and food products, is worried about potential challenges on supply access brought about by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

D&L president and CEO Alvin Lao said in a media briefing yesterday that 2026 presents a new set of uncertainties, particularly with the ongoing war in the Middle East and its potential impact on crude oil prices, raw material costs and global supply chains.

“Prices have gone up for a lot of products, not just oil. Everything has been affected. It’s hard to predict the actual impact, but definitely there will be an impact and definitely it will last a while. Even if tomorrow, let’s say they come into an agreement, that impact will still be felt for several months, if not more,” Lao said.

“The price of everything is going up. But that’s not only the problem. Never mind if the prices are going up, but it seems that access to supply for a lot of products is also affected and that’s a big worry,” he said.

Given concerns over the availability of raw material supplies, Lao said they are currently talking to a lot of the group’s suppliers to make sure they will not cut the supply of raw materials since a lot of them have already declared force majeure which cancels all contracted future supplies and deliveries are now limited to what is available.

However, he expressed confidence in securing these supplies because of the company’s strong ties with its suppliers as well as its experience in dealing with such a crisis, considering that it already went through several oil crises.

“We were able to survive. We’ve learned the lessons. We have put in a lot of measures to (deal with the problems) because we still remember what we did before,” Lao said.

Lao said D&L still has 74 days’ worth of inventories to keep its manufacturing facilities running “but the trick is getting more inventory. That’s something we’re looking at a lot today.”

Due to current uncertainties, he said the company “threw out all our projections.”

“Because all of the assumptions are no longer applicable. We had dollar-peso exchange rate assumption, interest rates, GDP growth, and so on and so forth. Nothing is the same anymore. And things are still changing. It’s so hard to project at the moment,” Lao said.

In 2025, D&L registered a 10.6-percent jump in recurring net income to P2.6 billion from P2.3 billion in 2024 on the strength of its biodiesel, plastics and consumer businesses.

In the fourth quarter of 2025, recurring income rose by a faster pace at 20 percent to P640 million.