The shipment of corrugated products continued its slide so far this year. According to the Fibre Box Association, shipments for February, the most recently reported month, show shipments down 0.4 percent to 28.854 billion square feet.
The decline for the month pushed the two-month total to 60.495 billion square feet, a 0.4 percent drop from figures the same time last year.
While total shipments dropped, shipments by different regional areas were mixed. Far and away the sharpest decline came from the Northeast, which saw shipments drop by 3.7 percent for the month, and by 2.7 percent over the first two months of the year.
The other two regions posting declines for the month were the Southeast, which saw shipments decline by 1.7 percent. For the first two months shipments declined by 0.8 percent. The North Central U.S. also saw shipments decline for February, although the figure was a much slighter 0.1 percent. For the first two months shipments dipped a slightly steeper 0.3 percent.
On the upswing, shipments from the East Central, South Central and West increased, with the increases ranging from 1.7 percent for the East Central, to 0.7 percent increase for the South Central.
While shipments dipped, the consumption of containerboard at domestic mills increased by 0.7 percent to 2.177 million tons. The increase pushed the consumption year to date to 4.644 million tons, a 0.5 percent increase from consumption the same time last year.
Meanwhile, the inventory of containerboard at corrugator plants stands at 2.43 million tons, a 5.3 percent decline from figures the previous month.
The drop in inventory helped drop the weeks of supply on hand to 4.5 weeks, a 2.2 percent decline from the previous month’s supply figure of 4.6 weeks.