The production of recycled paperboard continues to slide downward, despite the overall improvement in the paperboard industry. Recent figures from the American Forest and Paper Association show production for April at 1.34 million tons, pushing the four-month total to 5.044 million tons, down 4.5 percent from figures the same time last year.
The trend doesn’t appear to be showing any sign of an improvement. While recycled paperboard posted a sharp decline, overall paperboard production posted a much healthier 1.6 percent boost between last year and this year.
The three other components of the paperboard industry, unbleached kraft, semichemical paperboard and bleached paperboard, also posted sharp improvements over the first four months of the year.
Recycled linerboard and recycled corrugated medium both continued to post sharp declines in production figures. Downtime and mill closures continue to hammer away at domestic markets. While the problems have been widely publicized, one of the saving aspects for the paper stock industry has been the growing role of the export market.
Recycled linerboard, the largest segment of the recycled board sector, showed production dropping by more than 14 percent between last year and this year. For April, recycled linerboard production stands at 289,000 tons, pushing the annual rate, year to date, to 3.545 million tons.
Recycled corrugated medium also continues to show weakness. The production of recycled medium for April stands at 326,000 tons, a 7.8 percent drop from figures the same time last year.
While recycled medium dropped, total medium production increased by 2.9 percent. The improvement was driven by the sharp 11.5 percent jump in semichemical medium production.
The only sector of the recycled paperboard industry to show a positive sign was recycled boxboard. This grade posted a modest 0.3 percent growth between last year and this year. Even this growth paled in comparison to the overall boxboard production figure, which climbed 2.6 percent.