As expected, the price slump on the German recovered paper market intensified in September. Prices are poised to fall further in October, too. But the magnitude of the reductions will be smaller, say respondents. Market participants note that the paper industry has been accepting slightly larger volumes again in October and export activity has picked up.
In September, though, price declines for the ordinary grades, which had already started to slide in August, remained significant. Due to extensive paper machine downtimes, there was a sharp drop-off in demand for recovered paper. In some cases, mills were only accepting half of the contractually agreed volumes, EUWID was told. For August, the German paper industry association (Die Papierindustrie) had reported consumption of just 1.33 million tonnes of recovered paper – roughly 250,000 tonnes less than in May – and this figure likely declined further in September.
The full market report including the price changes for the individual recovered paper grades in September is available here...
