Page 30 from: January / February 2012
30 January/February 2012
China’s ‘remarkable’
collection performance
It has become a turn-of-the-year tradition for Giampiero Magnaghi, a
former President of the BIR world recycling organisation’s Paper
Division, to provide an updated, statistics-based insight into the world’s
paper & board and recovered paper industries. His latest report, which
compares 2010 with earlier years and picks out some of the salient
trends, is reviewed in this article while the full version of ‘Recovered
paper market in 2010’ can be found on the BIR website at www.bir.org
China achieved a ‘quite remarkable’ increase in its recovered paper collection tonnages
in 2010 – a year in which the Asian giant import-
ed a record-breaking 27 million tonnes-plus. The
volumes amassed from domestic sources leapt
19% from 34.5 million tonnes in 2009 to more
than 41.5 million tonnes the following year
whereas the country’s consumption of recovered
paper increased over the same period by around
6.2%, according to the ‘Recovered paper market
in 2010’ report prepared by Giampiero Mag-
naghi, Past President of the BIR’s Paper Division.
Worthy of note in this same context, David Powl-
son of UK-based Pöyry Management Consulting
told the most recent Paper Recycling Conference
– Europe, held in Barcelona, that China’s actual
collection rate is already ‘only a couple of percent-
age points’ behind that of Europe, and that, in the
future, the country cannot be expected to ‘collect
substantially more than it does at the moment’.
As a result, said Mr Powlson, there would a
requirement on China to import ever more recov-
ered fibre – and possibly 39 million tonnes per
annum by the end of the current decade. Latest
statistics suggest China’s imports were unlikely to
have exceeded 25 million tonnes in 2011.
Material from domestic collections in China ‘is
often inferior in quality to recovered paper
imported from other regions’, notes Mr Mag-
naghi in his report. In 2010, the country’s lead-
ing overseas supplier remained the USA with a
41% share of its import market, followed by
Europe on 27% and Japan on 13%.
A clear world-leader
Mr Magnaghi’s figures suggest that the USA was
the only country to collect more recovered paper
than China in 2010, with the former recording
a 3% increase from 45.4 million tonnes in 2009
to 46.76 million tonnes. The USA was also the
world’s second-largest consumer of recovered
paper with a total of 27.995 million tonnes in
2010 – equivalent to an increase of 8% over 2009.
Japan was next on the list with a consumption
total 3% higher in 2010 at 17.31 million tonnes.
Asia as a whole collected just short of 94 million
tonnes of recovered paper in 2010 and appar-
ently consumed 119.8 million tonnes – making
the continent a clear world-leader in both catego-
ries. Apparent consumption in Europe was the
next largest in regional terms on slightly less than
53.3 million tonnes. The USA remained the larg-
est exporter of recovered fibre after following up
total overseas shipments of 19.075 million tonnes
in 2009 with 18.815 million tonnes in 2010.
Frequent misunderstandings
Chinese recovered paper imports declined from
27.9 million tonnes in 2009 to 24.775 million
tonnes the following year, according to Mr Mag-
naghi’s figures. However, some of the other lead-
ing importers actually increased their overseas
purchases in the latter year, notably Indonesia
whose incoming volumes advanced from 2.29
million tonnes to 2.413 million tonnes. Substan-
tial increases were also recorded by South Korea
(from 1.09 million tonnes to 1.328 million
tonnes) and by Thailand (970 000 tonnes to 1.025
million tonnes) whereas India’s recovered fibre
imports fell over the same comparative period
from 2.18 million tonnes to 1.95 million tonnes.
P A P E R By Ian martin
Review: ‘Recovered paper market in 2010’
Asia upped its global paper and board production from just over
157 million tonnes in 2009 to almost 170 million tonnes in 2010.
In 2010, China’s recovered paper collection rose to more than 41.5 million tonnes.
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