China is getting stuck with paper?

Autumn is known by the fall of a leaf. Under the adjustment of household paper prices, China's paper safety problems caused by the rising price of pulp raw materials have gradually surfaced.

01 up! Go up! Go up!

"The last time I bought it was 29.9 yuan, and then I can't afford it anymore, so I can only save it in the future!" Jin V blogger Miao Ge posted such a micro blog, along with a photo of 10 rolls of Vinda toilet paper in a supermarket for 42.99 yuan.

Such ridicule is not rare, in the social media search keyword "paper price", some netizens said that now go to the print shop A4 paper prices; Some netizens joked that the envelope of express delivery has also become thinner and worse; Some netizens joked that the man who receives the paper may earn more than himself.

Since April 1, China's four major household paper enterprises - Jinhongye, Hengan, Vinda, Zhongshun (Jierou), have raised their product prices, and some household paper products have increased by 10%-20%.

In addition to household paper, other wrapping paper, cultural paper, special paper prices have already been adjusted. In March, the ex-factory price of white cardboard broke through the 10,000 yuan mark for the first time, up 18% from February.

The recovery of economic fundamentals has provided the basis for the price increase of paper products, but the biggest impetus is still from the upstream supply costs. Since the third quarter of 2020, the price of wood pulp, the most common raw material for paper products, has continued to rise, nearly doubling.

From the price increase of raw materials last year, the transmission to the downstream consumer price is already an inevitable event.

Papermaking as a generally stable demand industry, the cost of raw materials to a large extent determines the profit margins of downstream enterprises in the industrial chain, and most of China's paper enterprises are located in the middle of the raw material processing position, raw wood pulp imports accounted for more than two-thirds, the situation is quite passive.

In this round of price increases, a realistic and embarrassing problem has been exposed: not only the high-tech industry, but also the paper industry will be stuck. According to estimates, China's import dependence on pulp products soared from 12.93% in 2008 to 23.39% in 2018, in addition to 2009, China's foreign dependence on pulp to maintain a growth trend.

Autumn is known by the fall of a leaf. Under the adjustment of household paper prices, China's paper safety problems caused by the rising price of pulp raw materials have gradually surfaced.

02 Doomed to be controlled by others?

Pulp as the main raw material of the paper industry, the main source can be attributed to waste pulp, wood pulp, non-wood pulp three categories, and waste pulp and wood pulp as the main raw materials. Wood pulp is mainly used for household paper and cultural paper; Waste pulp is mostly used for packaging paper; Non-wood pulp is mostly used for household paper.

Wood pulp can be divided into coniferous pulp and broadleaf pulp according to the different species of raw materials. Coniferous pulp sources are mainly temperate and cold temperate countries and regions with higher latitudes, and the world's major exporters of coniferous pulp are Canada, Finland and the United States.

The main sources of broadleaf pulp are tropical and subtropical countries and regions with lower latitudes. Brazil, Chile and Indonesia are the major exporters of broadleaf pulp in the world.

Generally, coniferous pulp has stronger toughness and stretchability than broadleaf pulp, so a certain proportion of coniferous pulp is usually incorporated in the use of wood pulp to enhance the toughness of paper.

In 2020, China's wood pulp imports will be 30.64 million tons, an increase of 12.7%. Domestic wood pulp production was 11.41 million tons, and imported wood pulp accounted for 72.8% of the total consumption of wood pulp.

Behind the huge import volume is the basic reality of the lack of forest resources in China. The latest data shows that China's forest coverage rate is only 22.96 percent, lower than the world average of 31 percent. The forest area is also far behind the above-mentioned major exporters of wood pulp, so that the main raw material for the paper industry, wood pulp, needs to rely on foreign imports for a long time.

Now look at the waste pulp.

Waste pulp as a papermaking raw material, mainly used in wrapping paper. The source of waste pulp can be divided into domestic waste paper and imported waste paper, imported waste paper, the quality of paper products and pulp rate in developed countries is higher, so the foreign waste to Europe, the United States, Japan developed countries as the main source.

2020 is the end of the implementation Plan for the reform of the Solid Waste Import Management System, and the newly revised Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste will come into effect from September 1, 2020, and basically achieve zero solid waste imports by the end of 2020.

In recent years, under the guidance of relevant policies, the import volume of waste paper has decreased year by year. China Solid Waste Chemicals Management network information shows that in 2020, China's imported waste paper volume is 8.232,000 tons, although this amount accounts for less than 20% of China's waste paper production, but China's waste paper recovery rate is relatively slow, it is difficult to fill this part of the supply gap in the short term.