Packaging / Advertising & Office

Recently, the price of paper has become the focus of people's attention. First, "the price of paper towels in many places across the country" rushed into hot searches. Recently, the prices of cultural paper and packaging paper have also risen steadily. What is the specific situation?

White cardboard rose more than doubled, printing shop profits fell sharply

Liu Shuangxi is the owner of a printing shop. He is busy every day and his business is not bad. However, the recent increase in the price of cultural paper has made him a little worried. He said that after the Spring Festival, the price increase was relatively large. Taking white cardboard as an example, the original price was 6,500 yuan/ton, but now it is 13,000 to 14,000 yuan/ton.

Liu Shuangxi said that paper prices have continued to rise, but printing prices have remained the same, which has made their profits lower and lower. Now their profit points have been reduced by almost 30%.

Since May, major domestic cultural paper companies and traders have issued a number of price increase letters. Among them, the price of cultural paper has generally increased by 200 yuan/ton, and the price of white cardboard has increased by 1,000 yuan/ton.

Recently, the price of paper has increased so much that the price of pork has become a hot search. Household paper ushered in three consecutive increases in one month. Many netizens have commented: "Take up the toilet paper!"

Zhang Siwa, from Neijiang City, Sichuan Province, is a wholesaler of a paper mill. She goes to the paper mill every day before dawn to get paper, and then comes to the town to sell household paper, earning the price difference. Zhang Siwa said that the profit was too low to continue.

Unlike ordinary wholesalers, the price of household paper in large supermarkets is relatively stable. In a supermarket chain in Beijing, a salesperson said that the price of all household paper has not changed for the time being. Hema non-food procurement management expert Zhang Guangping told reporters that because chain supermarkets already have a lot of household paper inventory, they have signed long-term supply agreements with manufacturers, so there will be no increase in the price of household paper in the short term. .

However, Zhang Guangping said that as the four major tissue paper companies Jin Hongye, Hengan, Vinda, and Zhongshun Jierou successively issued price increase letters in April this year, it is temporarily uncertain when the terminal prices will be adjusted in the future.

Dun Zhiqiang, Secretary-General of Hubei Paper Association: The ex-factory prices of some household paper products on the market have increased by 10%-20%.

Not only did the price of household paper rise, on May 17, Nine Dragons Paper, which ranked No. 1 in the packaging paper industry in China, launched the third round of price increases in May. Within a week, the price of Nine Dragons Paper’s base paper averaged three times. Rise once a day. Along with the news of Nine Dragons' base paper price increases, the cardboard market has also ushered in a new round of price increases, and many of them have already experienced the second round of increases.

Zhang Shenjin, Secretary-General of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce Paper Chamber of Commerce: The main reason is that the prices of pulp, logistics, and energy in the upstream of papermaking have risen globally, which directly increase the production costs of enterprises. The second increase is on the basis of the previous low, especially white cardboard, which now has a relatively large increase.

Pulp prices and paper prices upside down, paper mills have stopped production

In this round of price increases, the major paper companies can be said to have made a lot of money. But since March, many paper companies have suddenly announced shutdowns for maintenance. What is going on?

On March 31, Shandong Sun Group announced that it would optimize and adjust industrial paper and art paper machines in April; on April 26, Shandong Huatai Paper issued a notice, planning to stop production and maintenance of art paper machines in early May; April On the 27th, Chenming Paper decided to shut down the cultural paper machine for 10 days in mid-to-early May.

When major paper companies were shutting down one after another, their first quarter financial reports were particularly shining. In the first quarter of this year, Chenming Paper's net profit was 1.179 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 481.42%; Sun Paper's net profit in the first quarter was 1.108 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 106.71%. So, when the industry's profits are growing so rapidly, why do major paper companies announce shutdowns for maintenance?

Zhang Shenjin, secretary-general of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce Paper Chamber of Commerce: The reason for the downtime was the upside down of pulp and paper prices due to the increase in the price of pulp raw materials, so that some paper mills had no choice but to shut down.

In fact, the increase in pulp prices is closely related to the demand for pulp. In the first quarter of this year, Manzhouli Port imported 70,000 tons of pulp, an increase of 37% year-on-year; the value was 260 million yuan, an increase of 42.1% year-on-year.

Since 2003, China's pulp imports have been the largest in the world, and demand is increasing. Among them, wood pulp imports will reach 30.64 million tons in 2020, and imported wood pulp accounts for 72.8% of total wood pulp consumption. Not only that, the price of wood pulp is also rising all the way, data shows: from last July to March this year, wood pulp prices rose by more than 400 US dollars / ton on average.

Not only is the import volume of wood pulp large, but my country's import volume of recycled paper pulp is also very high. Data shows that in 2020, a total of 1.78 million tons of recycled paper will be imported, and the volume of imports will increase by 93.48% month-on-month. The average import price has also increased significantly. The average import price in February 2021 was US$364.37/ton, an increase of US$80/ton from the end of 2020.

Filling up the gap in raw materials, domestic waste paper recycling growth rate, rising prices

The increase in pulp prices has brought considerable pressure to paper-making companies. At the same time, with the official implementation of my country’s announcement on a total ban on the import of solid waste, paper companies’ waste paper import quotas have also been cleared at the same time. Faced with a huge gap in recycled fibers, Chinese paper companies have also begun to take more measures to increase the supply of pulp raw materials.

The data shows that the average price of domestic yellow paperboard to the factory in April 2021 is 2,140 yuan/ton, an increase of about 25% year-on-year. According to industry insiders, the increase in the price of waste paper is related to the increase in pulp prices. With the implementation of the waste ban, the demand for domestic waste paper is increasing.

Tang Yanju, Secretary-General of the Waste Paper Branch of China Renewable Resources Recycling Association: We will encourage these specific leading recycling companies in the region to use their scale advantages to stabilize the current end-of-production companies’ raw materials and market prices, as well as the quality and quality of domestic waste paper. The amount of recycling will also increase substantially.

At present, my country's waste paper recycling rate has reached 90%, surpassing developed countries such as Japan, Europe and the United States, but a huge gap in waste paper still exists.

Zhang Shenjin, Secretary-General of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce Paper Chamber of Commerce: The solution to the shortage and tension of waste paper and waste paper pulp is to increase the production capacity of overseas waste paper pulp and encourage Chinese companies to build waste paper pulp processing plants overseas.

In the warehouse of a paper mill in Zhejiang, in addition to imported waste paper and domestic waste paper raw materials, you can also see a kind of gray cardboard, which is imported recycled pulp, which is processed into semi-finished products from imported waste paper in overseas factories. Pulp is re-imported into the country. It is understood that this year this company has built a plant for the production of recycled pulp in Southeast Asia, and it has already been put into production.

At present, some leading papermaking companies in my country are trying to deploy production capacity in countries with abundant forest resources overseas. Nine Dragons Paper acquired two paper mills and pulp mills in the United States, and built 1.6 million tons of paper production capacity in Vietnam; Shanying Paper acquired or controlled several pulp and paper mills in Sweden, Norway and other countries; Sun Paper In Laos, a new pulp mill was built and a 100,000 hectare pulp forest project was also deployed to ensure the supply of raw materials.

While increasing the source of foreign raw materials, my country must continue to increase the supply of its own raw materials. The development of raw materials for papermaking has become a new issue facing papermakers. In Sichuan, bamboo has become the best raw material for the production of paper towels because of its short growth cycle and rapid growth, forming a multi-benefit road for circular economy.