The world’s top condom producer, Malaysia’s Karex Bhd, plans to raise prices by 20% to 30% and possibly further if supply chain disruptions drag on due to the Iran war, its chief executive has said.

Karex is also seeing a surge in condom demand as rising freight costs and shipping delays have left many of its customers with lower stockpiles than usual, CEO Goh Miah Kiat told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

“The situation is definitely very fragile, prices are expensive … We have no choice but to transfer the costs right now to the customers,” Goh said.

Karex produces more than 5 billion condoms annually and is a supplier to leading brands like Durex and Trojan, as well as national health systems such as the UK’s NHS and global aid programmes run by the United Nations.

The condom maker joins a growing list of companies, including medical glove makers, bracing for supply chain bottlenecks as the Iran war strains energy and petrochemical flows from the Middle East, disrupting procurement of raw materials.

Since the conflict began in late February, Karex has seen costs increase for everything from synthetic rubber and nitrile used in manufacturing condoms to packaging materials and lubricants such as aluminium foils and silicone oil, Goh said.

He said Karex has enough supplies for the next few months and is looking to boost output to meet growing demand, as global stockpiles of condoms have dropped significantly after deep spending cuts in foreign aid, particularly by the US Agency for International Development last year.

Demand for condoms has risen about 30% this year, with shipping disruptions further exacerbating shortages, he said.

Karex’s shipments to destinations such as Europe and the United States are now taking close to two months to arrive, compared to a month previously.

“We’re seeing a lot more condoms actually sitting on vessels that have not arrived at their destination but are highly required,” Goh said, adding that a lot of developing countries do not have enough stock because it takes time for the products to reach them.

Black children across England and Wales are almost eight times more likely to be strip-searched by police than their white counterparts, a report has disclosed.

Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, said Black children are also overrepresented when officers use force and were more likely to have their “size, gender or build” cited as justification.

The findings, which point to a worsening of racial disparities, come more than five years after the case of Child Q, the Black 15-year-old schoolgirl who was strip-searched while menstruating by police officers.

Last summer, a disciplinary panel found two officers had committed gross misconduct during the “disproportionate” and “humiliating” incident at a school in east London. The pair were dismissed from the Metropolitan Police without notice.

Wednesday’s report found that the “deeply intrusive and potentially traumatic experience” is usually used because of the suspicion of drugs possession, but nearly half of all searches still result in no further action.

The latest findings from De Souza’s office are based on data from July 2023 to June 2024 across all 44 forces across England and Wales.

There were a total of 362 strip-searches of under-18s over that period. Half were white, 31% were Black, 11% Asian, 1.7% of mixed ethnicity and 12% other. In 3.9%, the child’s ethnicity was unknown or not recorded.

Taking into account the proportion of the general population, the commissioner’s office found that Black children are disproportionately almost eight times more likely to be strip-searched than white children and over five times more likely than Asian children.

Some searches were still being carried out in public view and with no appropriate adult present, the report found. The data also showed that three in 10 strip-searches – 30% – involved children who had already been searched at least once before.

According to a different data set, Black children were almost five times as likely to have force used during a search than white children.

In cases where force was used against a white child during a search, officers were more likely to note them as having a mental health need, but for Black children the reason identified was more often their size or build, the report said.

De Souza said too many strip-searches are still unnecessary, unsafe and underreported.

“My latest research presents an uncomfortable truth. Despite some promising green shoots of progress as overall searches of children have fallen since 2020, racial bias continues to influence practice drive numbers – and the strip-searching of children is far from being eliminated.

“Black children are consistently more likely than their peers to be strip-searched by police. And while this disparity had started to narrow in my last report, the trend appears to be reversing.

“This imbalance persists when looking at the use of force against children. Once again, Black children are overrepresented in the numbers: they are five times more likely to have force used against them by police officers than their white peers, and more likely to have their ‘size, gender or build’ cited as justification for force.

“It’s been my longstanding concern from this five-year long investigation, since Child Q’s story: the ‘adultification’ of Black children, where they are perceived as older than they are, and somehow less deserving of protection. We cannot accept a system that treats children differently based on how they look. Children must, first and foremost, be treated as children.”

Force, such as handcuffs, firearms or Tasers, was used in almost a fifth (17%) of all stop and searches of children between April 2024 and March 2025, her report added.

But in 43% of instances where force was used, no further action was taken, which the commissioner said called into “question the use of necessary and proportionate tests”.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We’re introducing extensive safeguards for children and young people for strip-searching and bringing in reforms to drive up standards in policing, improve vetting and tackle misconduct.”

The National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for stop and search, deputy chief constable Andy Mariner, said policing has made changes to policy about strip-searching and has been working closely with the College of Policing to update its policies.

“While there are positive signs in that the number of strip-searches have been falling over time, we continue to work with policing partners, stakeholders and academics to understand and address the disproportionate use of stop and search, which we understand can undermine trust between policing and communities,” he said.

“We are committed to increasing transparency around our use of stop and search, including strip-search, which is a legitimate and useful policing tool to help us in removing dangerous weapons and drugs from the streets, but we know that when it is used inappropriately, it can damage our relationships with affected communities.”