The Bottom Line

DEREK MAHLBURG Healthy gains in packaging and tissue outweighed the slide in graphic paper demand in 2016, allowing global paper and paperboard demand to grow by 1 percent, or 3.9 million metric tons. This expansion is somewhat subdued relative to the past 15 years’ average growth rate of 1.5 percent per year, but it represents an improvement compared to the ...

Paper and paperboard will continue to play a vital role in the evolving global packaging market, according to the latest exclusive research from Smithers Pira. Overall growth in dollar value terms for packaging was depressed for the years spanning the middle of the decade, although this is largely attributable to relative strength of the dollar against other currencies across that ...

TEDD POWERS, FISHER INTERNATIONAL Global trade is one of the most important issues in the pulp and paper industry. While trade is a great opportunity for some, it is a great threat to others. In some regions, domestic producers worry about the impact imports will have on the profitability of their markets. For others, finding new customers beyond their borders ...

DAVID KATSNELSON The “Brexit” vote in the summer of 2016 and the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States were strong signals of a dramatic change in the direction of the globalization trend, with both of these events confounding the predictions of experts and talking heads. It seems that we are now embarking on a cycle ...

BEN THORP, HARRY SEAMANS, AND MASOOD AKHTAR According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) there were 17,619,000 Americans employed in the manufacturing section in January 1998; by January 2010, this figure had declined to 11,462,000, or a loss of 6,157,000 factory jobs in 12 years (Hemphill et al. 2015). This does not count the number of “consequential” jobs that ...

Chinese paper companies’ overseas expansion strategy NEO WU While papermaking was invented in China, it was western countries that built it into a major industry and made it the ubiquitous commodity it is today. But China is poised to reclaim its central role in the paper industry on a global stage…and then some.  Over the past 30 years, China’s paper ...

HANNAH ZHAO After experiencing a three-quarters-long price roller coaster, the global recovered paper market now has to face another potential storm: a big change in Chinese recovered paper import policy. The China General Administration of Customs announced the National Sword 2017 program in February to crack down on illegal solid waste imports. National Sword 2017 did not catch much attention ...

MARK RUSHTON Decades ago, graphic paper was a powerhouse, with global demand growth consistently outpacing growth in GDP. Clearly, things have changed. Paper360° Senior Editor Mark Rushton spoke with RISI’s John Maine, an industry-recognized expert for global printing and writing paper markets, to learn about what the future may hold for graphic paper. RUSHTON: Can you give us a brief ...

MATT ELHARDT, FISHER INTERNATIONAL China and the United States are the two biggest containerboard markets in the world, accounting for 50 percent of the world’s total production of the grade between them. Yet China’s capacity has grown rapidly since 2007 (about 10 percent per year), while that of the US has remained fairly flat (Fig. 1 tracks capacity trends for ...

ROD YOUNG In the past three years, significant changes have impacted the dissolving pulp market, and more can be expected in the next five years. RISI has just published Outlook for the Global Dissolving Pulp Market 2016, our third detailed study of this relatively small, but fascinating sector of the world pulp market. The study discusses major developments since the ...