Keeping up with capacity shifts

The closing of old paper mills and the ramping up of new ones in Europe is changing scrap paper shipping patterns on that continent, according to market reports presented at the Paper Division meeting at the 2015 Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) World Recycling Convention & Exhibition in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), in May.

Dominique Maguin of France-based La Compagnie des Matières Premières described the closing of the Aylesford Newsprint mill in the United Kingdom as “removal of capacity from this market sector [that] is inevitable in light of the worldwide trend toward a reduction in newsprint consumption.”

Nonetheless, the mill “had been sourcing up to 500,000 tonnes of recovered fibre annually,” Maguin said, and the closing has “made related fibre sales more difficult, while prices have suffered too.”

Jaroslav Dobes of Remat s.r.o. in the Czech Republic said in his nation in 2014, “recovered paper collection volumes recorded their biggest annual growth [ever] of around 100,000 tonnes, or some 12%.”

That fibre has been flowing across international borders within Europe and outside of it, Dobes said. In the near future, Turkish demand for imported recovered fibre is expected to increase because of added capacity.

Paper Division President Reinhold Schmidt of Germany’s Recycling Karla Schmidt expressed concern about mills in Europe bypassing recycling firms to obtain recovered fibre directly from commercial generators and from towns and cities.

“The businesses of the recovered paper industry are confronted [with] direct contracts of the paper mills with communal and commercial collection sources and are furthermore stressed by the bureaucratic burden,” Schmidt said.

The future enforcement of the EN643 standard in Europe also was on Schmidt’s mind. “EN 643 determines precise percentage limits for nonpaper [contaminants] for each grade, [and] the moisture content is limited to 10%,” he said.

“However,” Schmidt continued, “for both limits, recognized measuring methods and measuring techniques are still missing. Under certain circumstances, it could therefore be difficult to control recovered paper deliveries whether [or not] these [shipments] are in line with the required quality standards.”
 

BIR President Ranjit Baxi of London-based J&H Sales International commented that a combination of currency fluctuations, changing freight rates and disorder at Pacific Coast ports in the United States have caused Europe to gain ground on the U.S.’s supremacy as the leading supplier of recovered fibre to China.

In the first quarter of 2015, Europe exported 2 million tonnes of fibre, while the U.S. exported 3.1 million tonnes. That compares with 1.9 million tonnes that came from Europe in the first quarter of 2014 and 3.5 million tonnes shipped from the U.S. that quarter.

Baxi also noted that export volumes from several European nations increased substantially in the first quarter of 2015 compared with a year earlier, including: Greece, with a 43.7% increase; Spain, up by 35.1%; Ireland, with a 24.8% increase; and France, with a 17.6% export increase. Meanwhile, China’s first quarter imports declined by 6.4% compared with the first quarter of 2014.

Guest speaker Atul Kaul of Saudi Arabia-based Waraq Arab Paper Manufacturing Co. advocated for recovered fibre export restrictions in his company’s host nation. “Our paper industry is threatened with the free export of recovered fibre,” he stated, adding that some 30,000 tonnes of old corrugated containers (OCC) leave Saudi Arabia every month for India and China.