The prices of everything are going up for all the reasons we know about, driven at least in part, by energy prices and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  I can't see how Pendraken could possibly be unaffected by this.

Quote from: FierceKitty on 24 August 2022, 03:09:53 AMYou can't be in the education business!

No your quite right.  I am a mercenary in the Telecoms business. Turned down a management position 20 years ago as I could not afford the pay cut. In the best case scenario it would have taken me 7 years and cost me nearly £30k to get back to where I was at the time.

Turned out to be a good decision.

Quote from: John Cook on 25 August 2022, 12:11:08 PMThe prices of everything are going up for all the reasons we know about, driven at least in part, by energy prices and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  I can't see how Pendraken could possibly be unaffected by this.

We're holding off as much as possible on any further price increases but I don't know what'll happen by next year.  The minimum wage/NI increases added about £10k to the annual wage bill, the metal prices at their peak were +£30k per year, MDF is up £4k, silicon for moulds about £1k, plus the fuel for the van, packaging materials, etc. so it's not been a great 12-24 months lately.  The price rise we did in Feb generated about £20k of additional income but obviously that covers less than half of the costs increases we've seen. 

I keep hoping that the decrease in metal prices last month will continue through the rest of this year and get things back to a more sustainable level.  The energy cost increases won't hit us until 2023 as we're in a contract, so we can deal with that later.