In Europe, paper prices are skyrocketing in all segments: newsprint for books, packaging cartons, pulp, and even used newspaper scraps are also on the rise.
In Italy, two economic pages of the Corriere della Sera, published here, when analyzing the upward trend of raw materials, were surprised to find that paper is a product that Europe is not dependent on imports for, and yet prices are still skyrocketing. “Price of paper and carton increased by 70%”, as the headline of the article. Only “in the first 6 months of this year, pulp for the production of printing paper and cardboard has increased in price from 60% to 70% depending on the type”. “The price of old newspapers and recycled cartons has also increased to a record, nearly half times, a ton of waste paper is now priced at 155 euros, and collected cardboard can also be sold for 170 euros per ton.”
Europe has a very developed paper production industry, now paper is not yet scarce, but the price is still high according to the world market. VTV recorded from the Kurier newspaper in Austria said that there are a number of reasons for the current price fever. First of all is “lack of old paper, collected waste paper”. For more than a year, due to the pandemic, businesses did not need to print ads, and the number of printed newspapers sold at stalls also decreased sharply. “The decline of old paper and waste paper leads to a shortage of raw materials for paper mills”, because three-quarters of paper materials are from recycled old paper. At the same time, “demand for paper in Asia and the US has increased sharply”, especially carton packaging for packaging, due to a sudden increase in online shopping since the pandemic. The American company Amazon has bought almost all of the cartons that Europe exports. The final reason is “buy chemicals, pay for electricity, all paper production costs go up”.
In Germany, the main reason is lack of raw materials, according to the German newspaper Markische Oderzeitung. The article in this newspaper read: “The German industry of producing office paper and cardboard is in moderation.” “Germany was even forced to import scrap paper.” Since last year, paper mills have rushed to produce carton packaging, because the profit from cardboard is much higher, and at the same time, the output of office printing paper is reduced. A spokesman for the German Publishers Association told the newspaper that “price pressure is weighing heavily” on print paper.
In the Czech Republic, a number of publishers were forced to postpone the release of books, because they could not stand the cost of printing paper. The newspaper LidovĂ© noviny writes that the Czech Republic’s largest publishing group is also “faced with limited capacity due to high prices of printing paper, unable to keep up with delivery deadlines”.