Paper recyclers have some more dragons left to slay
‘Worldwide demand for recov-
ered paper and board was
around 250 million tonnes in
2017,’ reported Bill Moore to
the recent Paper & Plastics
Recycling Conference in
Warsaw. All in all, global interest
will continue to increase in the
coming two years but room for
growth will be ‘tighter’. As
Moore put it: ‘The sector is not
fat and happy.’
leaps forward’ in recent years, the
mandatory 50% target set by the EU
for 2020 was proving ‘really ambitious’
for Poland’s recyclers, he conceded.
Growth in a larGely
‘flat’ market
‘OCC demand – that’s where the action
is,’ Moore continued in his market
analysis. ‘The rest is basically flat;
they’re hardly in the race. This includes
high grades.’ In America, OCC now
represents 67% of the market.
Generally speaking, printing and writ-
ing grades were ‘dropping like a
stone’, he said, although tissue
remained a decent market with steady
demand. Only 72 million tons of paper
and board was produced in the USA
in 2016. ‘This is a 30% drop from
America’s peak of 105 million tons
back in 1990,’ Moore underlined.
‘Over the last decade, we have seen
barely 200 new paper recycling mills
constructed globally,’ observed David
Powlson of research firm Pöyry. More
than three quarters of the new capaci-
ty has been located in China.
Reviewing latest data, he remarked
that worldwide trade in recovered
paper totalled 57 million tons in
2016, some 78% of which entailed
shipments to China originating
Total demand for recovered paper
and board will exceed 275 million
tonnes by 2021, according to new RISI
market data. ‘The biggest demand is
in developing countries, of course,’
industry analyst Bill Moore of
US-based Moore & Associates told
delegates who had gathered at
Recycling Today’s annual Paper &
Plastics Recycling Conference, staged
in the Polish capital Warsaw. ‘Easily’
55% of the world’s paper and board
production was based on recycled
fibre, he asserted.
North America is maintaining a 65%
recovery rate for paper and board as
compared to around 50% for China,
80% for Japan and 78% throughout
Western Europe. These figures indi-
cate that the global average is hover-
ing around 50%.
Poland was currently recording a
paper and board recycling rate of
some 30%, announced Szymon Dziak-
Czekan, president of the Polish
Recycling Association. Despite ‘big
A u T h o R Kirstin Linnenkoper
22
Worldwide trade in recovered paper totalled 57 million tons in 2016, reported David Powlson.
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