Weekly

European recovered paper markets face continued pressure in December

Frauke Schmidt, 17 December 2024

December 2024 saw further declines in recovered paper prices across Europe, particularly for ordinary and corrugated grades. Brown recovered paper grades saw higher declines than white grades in Europe in December.

This was due to continued widespread downtime in the paper industry, which suppressed demand.

The market for corrugated grades experienced significant price drops, while mixed paper grades showed more resilience, partly due to increased export activities to Asian markets or the fact that graphic paper mills use this grade to make up for decreasing arisings of recovered paper grades for deinking. However, this growing price differential is likely to encourage more sorting of recovered paper to capture the higher value of deinking grades.

Despite the overall weak market conditions, there were signs of rebounding export activities to Asian markets.

Looking ahead to 2025, many industry experts anticipate the market to bottom out in January or February at the latest, as export activity is hoped to continue to be more lively and downtimes measure at the European paper industry comes to an end.

Source: Euwid