[Pulp and paper] 2023 China pulp and paper industry is full of challenges and opportunities

2023-12-12

2023 China pulp and paper industry is full of challenges and opportunities

[Pulp and paper] Paper prices rise, why are paper mills shutting down?

2023-12-12

Paper prices rise, why are paper mills shutting down?Recently, the price of paper has become the focus of attention, first, "the price of paper towels in many places in the country" rushed to the hot search. Recently, cultural paper, packaging paper also follow the price rise, what is the specific situation?
White cardboard more than doubled printing shop profits sharply
Liu Shuangxi is the owner of a printing shop, busy every day, business is also good, but recently the price of cultural paper has risen, let him worry. He said that after the Spring Festival, the price increase is relatively large, taking white cardboard as an example, the original is 6,500 yuan/ton, and now it is 13,000 to 14,000 yuan/ton.
Liu Shuangxi said that paper prices continue to rise, printing prices remain the same, which has made their profits lower and lower, and now the profit point has dropped by almost 30 percent.
Since entering May, the major domestic cultural paper enterprises and traders have issued a number of price hike letters, of which the general price increase of cultural paper is 200 yuan/ton, and the price increase of white cardboard is 1000 yuan/ton.
Recently, the rising price of paper forced the price of pork on the hot search, household paper 1 month ushered in three consecutive rises, many netizens have commented: "Hurry up the toilet paper to stock up!"
Zhang Siwa, a wholesaler at a paper mill in Neijiang, Sichuan province, goes to the mill every day before dawn to get paper and then comes to town to sell household paper to earn the difference, but now because the mill has raised prices, Zhang Siwa says the profit is too low to go on.
Unlike ordinary wholesalers, the price of household paper in large supermarkets is relatively stable. In a chain supermarket in Beijing, the sales staff said that the price of all household paper has not changed for the time being. Box horse non-food procurement management expert Zhang Guangping told reporters that because the supermarket chain has a lot of household paper inventory, but also signed a long-term supply agreement with the manufacturers, so there will be no short-term household paper prices rise.
However, Zhang Guangping said that with the four major life paper enterprises in April this year, Jinhongye, Hengan, Vinda, and Zhongshun Jierou have issued price increase letters, when the future will adjust the price of the terminal, it is temporarily uncertain.
Dun Zhiqiang, secretary general of Hubei Paper Association: Some household paper products on the market have raised their factory prices by 10%-20%.
Not only the price of household paper rose, on May 17, the packaging paper industry ranked first in the domestic production of Nine Dragons Paper launched the third round of price increases in May, a week, Nine Dragons Paper base paper prices rose every three days on average. With the news of Nine Dragons' base paper price increase, the cardboard market has also ushered in a new round of price increases, many of which are already the second round of increases.
Zhang Shenjin, Secretary general of the National Federation of Industry and Commerce Paper Chamber of Commerce: The main reason is the global rise in pulp, logistics, energy and other prices in the upstream of paper making, which directly increases the production costs of enterprises. The second rise is on the basis of the previous low rise, especially white cardboard, now the rise is relatively large.
Pulp and paper prices upside down paper mills have stopped production
In this round of price increases, the major paper companies can be described as earning POTS full of money. But since March, a number of paper enterprises have suddenly announced the shutdown of maintenance, which is what is going on?
On March 31, Shandong Sun Group announced that industrial paper and copper sheet paper machines would be optimized and adjusted in April; On April 26, Shandong Huatai Paper issued a notice that it planned to stop production and maintenance of copper sheet paper machines in early May; On April 27, Chenming Paper decided to stop the cultural paper machine for maintenance for 10 days in mid-early May.
In the major paper companies have shut down, the first quarter of its financial results are particularly shining. In the first quarter of this year, Chenming Paper net profit of 1.179 billion yuan, an increase of 481.42%; The net profit of Sun Paper in the first quarter was 1.108 billion yuan, an increase of 106.71%. So, when industry profits are growing so rapidly, why do major paper companies announce downtime and maintenance?
Zhang Shenjin, Secretary general of the National Federation of Industry and Commerce Paper Chamber of Commerce: The reason for the shutdown is that the price of pulp raw materials has risen, resulting in the upside down of pulp prices and paper prices, so that some paper mills have no way to shut down.
In fact, the rising price of pulp is closely related to the demand for pulp, the first quarter of this year, Manzhouli port imported pulp 70,000 tons, an increase of 37%; It was worth 260 million yuan, up 42.1 percent year-on-year.
Since 2003, China's pulp imports have been ranked first in the world, and the demand is growing, of which, wood pulp imports in 2020 reached 30.64 million tons, imported wood pulp accounted for 72.8% of the total consumption of wood pulp. Not only that, the price of wood pulp is also rising all the way, data show: from July last year to March this year, wood pulp prices rose by an average of more than 400 US dollars/ton.
Not only is the import volume of wood pulp large, the import volume of recycled pulp in China is also very high, data show that in 2020, a total of 1.78 million tons of recycled pulp was imported, and the import volume increased significantly by 93.48%. The average import price also increased significantly, with the average import price in February 2021 at $364.37 / ton, up $80 / ton from the end of 2020.
Fill the raw material gap domestic waste paper recycling growth rate rising prices
The rise in pulp prices has brought no small pressure to paper enterprises, at the same time, with the official implementation of China's announcement on the import of solid waste related matters, the import quota of paper enterprises is also zero. In the face of the huge recycled fiber gap, Chinese paper enterprises have also begun to take more measures to improve the supply of pulp raw materials.
Data show that the average price of domestic yellow board paper to the factory in April 2021 is 2140 yuan/ton, up about 25% year-on-year. Insiders said that the rise in the price of waste paper is related to the rise in the price of pulp, and with the landing of the ban on waste paper, the demand for domestic waste paper is increasing.
Tang Yanju, Secretary General of the Waste Paper Branch of the China Renewable Resources Recycling Association: To promote these specific leading recycling enterprises in the region, play to its scale advantages, to stabilize the raw materials and market prices of the current end production enterprises, the quality of domestic waste paper and the amount of recycling will also be greatly improved.
At present, China's waste paper recovery rate has reached 90%, more than Japan, Europe and the United States and other developed countries, but the huge gap of waste paper still exists.
Zhang Shenjin, Secretary General of the National Federation of Industry and Commerce Paper Chamber of Commerce: The way to solve the gap and tension between waste paper and waste pulp is to improve the production capacity of overseas waste pulp and encourage Chinese enterprises to build waste pulp processing plants overseas.
In addition to imported waste paper and domestic waste paper raw materials in the warehouse of a paper factory in Zhejiang, you can also see a gray cardboard, which is imported recycled pulp, that is, processed into semi-finished pulp in overseas factories with imported waste paper and then imported to China. It is understood that this year, the company built a factory in Southeast Asia to produce recycled pulp, and has been put into production.

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