Company: GEF
Filing Date: 2025-11-19
Form Type: 10-KT
Source: 0001628280-25-053146
Chunk: 16

Company: GREIF, INC
Filing Date: 2025-11-19
Form: 10-KT
Chunk 16
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 periods.

#### We Operate in Highly Competitive Industries.
Each of our operating segments operates in highly competitive industries. The most important competitive factors we face are price, quality, customer service and on-time delivery. To the extent any of our competitors become more successful with respect to any of these key competitive factors, we could lose customers and our sales could decline. Moreover, we anticipate that the lower customer demand patterns that we experienced throughout fiscal years 2024 and 2025 will continue on an overall basis through 2026, which may cause our competitors to reduce prices to maintain or increase their sales volumes, which could adversely impact our sales volumes and our margins. In addition, due to the tendency of certain customers to diversify their suppliers, we could be unable to increase or maintain sales volumes with particular customers. Certain of our competitors are substantially larger and have significantly greater financial resources.

In addition, some of our products are made from raw materials that are subject to pronounced and at times, rapid price fluctuations, such as steel, which is used in the manufacture of steel drums and containers and intermediate bulk container (“IBC”) cages, old corrugated containers (“OCC”), which impacts our paper products, and oil, which in turn affects the price of resin for plastic drums and containers, including IBC bottles. Particularly in well-developed markets in Europe and in the United States, any substantial increases in the supply of industrial packaging resulting from capacity increases, the stockpiling of raw materials or other types of opportunistic behavior by our competitors in a period of high raw materials prices, or price wars, could adversely affect our margins and the profitability of our business. With many of our customers, we have implemented raw material price adjustment mechanisms based on industrial index pricing; however these price adjustment mechanisms lag market price changes and our ability to pass through costs to our customers could take months to realize which in turn could adversely impact our product margins. Although price is a significant basis of competition in our industry, we also compete on the basis of product reliability, the ability to deliver products on a global scale and our reputation for quality and customer service. If we fail to maintain our current standards for product quality, the scope of our distribution capabilities or our customer relationships, our reputation and business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows could be adversely affected.

Negative media reports about us or our businesses, whether accurate or inaccurate, could damage our reputation and relationships with our customers and suppliers, cause customers and suppliers to terminate their relationship with us, or impair our ability to effectively compete