July 2021

Pulp Capacity & Price Changes

• China’s Asia Symbol has started seven days of downtime at Rizhao mill, expecting to curtail BHK output by 65,000 tonnes. (RISI, Jul 2021)
• West Fraser announces $50/t softwood BCTMP hike in China, effective with Aug orders. (RISI, Jul 2021)
• The government of Myanmar is launching a tender to operate Thar Paung P&P mill, which has been closed since 2014. The mill houses a P&W paper machine and pulp line with capacities 50t/day and 200t/day respectively. (RISI, Jul 2021)
• Paper Excellence makes unconditional takeover offer for Fibre Excellence’s Tarascon pulp mill in France. (RISI, Jul 2021)
• Domtar stockholders approve proposal to adopt business combination with Paper Excellence (RISI, Jul 2021)
• Stocks of woodpulp at European ports fell in June, dipping 11.7% month on month. Inventories stood at 1,081,603 tonnes, down from 1,224,433 tonnes in May. (Europulp, Jul 2021)
• Lee & Man to build new semi-chemical pulp line at Chongqing mill in China, expected to start up in 2023 (RISI, Jul 2021)
• Sappi restarts operations at three South African mills following suspension of activities due to civil unrest (RISI, Jul 2021)

Paper Capacity & Price Changes

• Graphic paper prices move up in Brazil: imported UWF is traded at $850-900/t range in July, a 12.2% annual increase; Domestic offset prices are at real 4,100-4,500/t in July, up 24.6% over a year ago, while cutsize is traded at real 4,150-4,900/t, 19.1% higher vs the same time in 2020. (RISI, Jul 2021)
• Burgo Group will increase prices by 50 euro/ton for its Woodfree and Mechanical product range, reels and sheets, effective for deliveries from the 15th of Sep 2021. (RISI, Jul 2021)
• Lecta will increase levels for all two-side CWF and UWF grades in sheets and reels by 8-10%, the new prices will come into effect for deliveries from September 1 in all markets. (RISI, Jul. 2021)
• Sappi will raise prices for its Transjet, Basejet and Inkjet grades by 8-12% on deliveries from September 1. (RISI, Jul. 2021)
• North America’s major UWF paper producers IP and PCA reported improved sales and earnings in 2021 Q2, both confirming that paper prices are going up; US uncoated paper business’ sales in the 2021 Q2 were 379,000 tons and were 132,000 53% higher than 2020 Q2. US mills shipped 1.2 million tons of UWF in 2021 Q2, 18% more compared with the 2020 Q2
  • P’s North America printing paper revenue surged 55% to $410 million tons YoY.
  • PCA’s paper sales $142 million with a 8% margin in 2021 Q2 compared with sales of $123 million and a 4% margin in 2020 Q2. (RISI, Jul. 2021)
• European UWF and CWF deliveries grow in May: UWF deliveries rose by 46.7% year on year to 518,000 tons in May; CWF shipments accelerated by 49.8% year on year to 327,000 tons, according to EURO-GRAPH. (RISI, Jul. 2021)