The slump in demand on Italy’s recovered paper market has now undoubtedly reached the high grades, as well. Prices have fallen sharply in June as a result. Hardly any buyers could be found for deinking material, either. There was leeway for price cuts for these grades this month, particularly for newspapers. Ordinary recovered paper grades also saw prices head lower, but a significant price drop failed to materialise.
Market players saw no improvement in demand for ordinary recovered paper grades in June. On the contrary, some insiders found that the market had become even quieter. Paper and cartonboard mills have few orders on hand and are often not running their machines at capacity. Idling paper machines from time to time is now normal practice, especially in the corrugated case material business. This approach is also becoming more widespread in the coreboard and greyboard business.A reduction in prices for ordinary recovered paper grades was thus not surprising. However, low collection volumes stopped prices from falling too much.
Lacklustre demand and the assumption that many paper mills will likely take longer downtimes in August are making merchants a little concerned about the near future. Export business with Asia was not exactly flourishing in June, either....
