Paper Stock Exports Surge

Although domestic markets have been slumping over the past year, offshore orders have been surging. This trend has resulted in more paper stock dealers shifting more of their orders to the offshore market.

The most recent figures from the Commerce Department show total paper stock exports have jumped more than 20 percent so far this year. The improvement in export markets have been driven primarily by a sharp jump in exports to China. As has been reported over the past several months, the increased new capacity coming on line in China is resulting in increased orders for raw material from the United States. With more than 100,000 additional tons of capacity coming on line by the end of this year, there is a growing demand for recovered fiber to feed these new machines.

For July, the most recently reported month, exports of recovered fiber topped one million tons with a value of close to $100 million. The increase for the month pushed the annual rate, year to date to 13.3 million tons.

While recovered fiber exports have surged, the export of wood pulp has sharply declined. During the same period of time pulp exports declined by 13.1 percent.

While China continues to be the driving force for the export market, shipments to Canada, the largest importer of U.S. recovered fiber, also posted a significant increase in shipments from the U.S. For July importers of U.S. recovered fiber stands at around 230,000 tons, an increase of 10.5 percent from figures the same time last year.