Packaging / Advertising & Office

According to the observation report on the import and export data of Huacheng, recently, packaging paper enterprises, including the leading paper enterprises Shanying International and Nine Dragons Paper, have successively issued price increase letters, with the increase mostly ranging from 20 yuan/ton to 50 yuan/ton. The increase fluctuates slightly, but it is called "small step fast rise" by the industry, and is expected to usher in a wave of "big rise".

At the same time, some bases of paper mills of recent scale are also releasing the outage maintenance plans from December 2022 to January 2023.

Li Li, an analyst, said, "On the whole, the pattern of supply exceeding demand for box board corrugated paper has not changed." At the same time, Li Li predicted that the short-term market of the packaging paper industry might present a situation of periodic interval shocks.

According to the Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report, from the beginning of December, under the leadership of Jiulong Paper and Shanying International, the packaging paper enterprises launched the second round of large-scale downtime maintenance plan in the year.

On December 4, Shanying International announced that 17 paper machines in five domestic production bases would be stopped for 10 to 29 days from January 6 to February 3, 2023. According to the design capacity, it is estimated that the output will be reduced by about 312000 tons, most of which are box corrugated paper; Following the announcement at the beginning of this month that some paper machines in Tianjin, Quanzhou and Dongguan bases will be shut down in December, Jiulong Paper released the Spring Festival shutdown schedule for Dongguan and Taicang bases on December 19, the earliest shutdown time will be January 5, 2023.

In July this year, packaging paper enterprises started large-scale shutdown after experiencing weak industrial demand, weak terminal price increase and accumulated inventory in the first half of the year. CICC expects the industry to reduce production by more than 1 million tons from August to September this year. Since entering the fourth quarter, the demand level has not improved, and the paper price is also falling under the "low peak season" market. Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

"At the end of the year, some paper mills issued a round stop plan, which may be good for the paper mills to ship in the region in the short term." Li Li said that, on the whole, the demand side recovered slowly, new orders were not released enough, and the market or support before the Spring Festival was limited.

According to the import and export data observation report of Genhuacheng, after the announcement of the downtime maintenance plan, from the perspective of the market price change, the shutdown is more concentrated in South China, and some paper mills have raised the price by 20 yuan to 50 yuan/ton. According to the reporter's observation, Shanying International and Nine Dragons Paper had just announced price increases before, but in recent days, they announced price increases again. Frequent price increases announced the pricing power of the paper mill, which is also known as the "small step fast" price increase in the industry.

Can the current short-term demand pull the industry out of the trough? In the new round of downtime, will the price of wrapping paper go down again? In response to this problem, the analysts of CICC said, "The current industry generally faces the triple dilemma of weak demand+high cost+shortage of raw materials, and the profit per ton and valuation level are at the bottom of the last decade, with a limited downward trend."

Benefiting from the policies of "replacing plastic with paper" and "ban on waste", the packaging paper industry was initially optimistic, but in 2022, under the double pressure of "high cost and weak demand", the industry fell into a trough.

"Since this year, corrugated and cardboard have broken the seasonal characteristics for many times, showing a super seasonal decline," said Xu Ling, an analyst. According to the seasonal law, the probability of corrugated and cardboard prices rising in December is greater than the probability of falling. However, from the perspective of terminal consumption, the overall increase is limited, and the New Year's Day, Christmas and other holidays do not support the downstream demand significantly. Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.