At the beginning of the new year, merchants on the Italian recovered paper market were once again relying heavily on Far East exports to sustain their business. Given the very weak demand in their own country, suppliers were pursuing alternative sales channels in Asia intensely, and met with success not only for old corrugated containers (OCC) but also increasingly for mixed paper and magazines. On occasion, new shavings of corrugated board were also being shipped to Asia.
The focus on exports prevented a larger drop in prices on the Italian market, at least for the ordinary grades of recovered paper. Deinking grades became cheaper again in many cases, while prices of higher grades were stable.
The year 2023 got off to a slow start in Italy. Many paper and cartonboard mills had extended production downtimes over Christmas and New Year’s and some of them only started up again on 9 January. They therefore had high inventories of ordinary recovered paper grades. Consequently, the mills had almost no need for more material in the first weeks of January, especially since they were allocated additional volumes, particularly of mixed paper, from the Comieco consortium....
