No Sign of Improvement for Domestic Paper Stock Market

The domestic paper industry hasn’t been going great guns to boost paper stock markets in the United States.

In days past domestic paper and paperboard mills were the driving force for the success of the paper recycling industry. However, the recent improvement in paper stock markets has been driven, not so much by the domestic paper industry, rather from mills outside the United States.

Recent figures from the American Forest and Paper Association point out this statistic. According to monthly numbers from the AFPA, the consumption of recovered fiber at U.S. paper and paperboard mills during August reached 2.859 million tons, pushing the eight-month figure to 22.402 million tons. The figure for this year is down 4.4 percent from figures during the same time last year.

The sluggishness in the domestic market has caused some significant concern as more domestic machines are taken off line permanently.

While consumption continues to slump, the inventory of recovered fiber at domestic mills declined at the end of August compared to the inventory figure the previous month. At the end of August inventory stands at slightly less than 990,000 tons, a 7 percent drop from July’s inventory level.

While the figure is down sharply from the prior month, the inventory level for the month is up a slight 0.9 percent from figures the same time last year.