U.S. and World Paper Situations

Recently, overseas media have paid special attention to the situation of paper. This article begins with the situation in the United States.

According to statistics from the U.S. printing trade unions, the paper cost of 22.6% of printing costs, direct wages accounted for 16.6%, management fees accounted for 10%, and operating expenses accounted for 8.7%. These expenditures have been relatively stable during the past 10 years. However, with the exception of paper expenses, there have been considerable changes year by year. Not long ago, it was learned that since the recession started in 1990-91, the papermaking industry in the United States has reached the worst situation. Due to the firmness of the US dollar, European paper companies have an advantage over American paper companies, and in the United States they have increased imports. , Exports decreased. As a result, the papermaking company in the United States made a large-scale closure of the factory, which caused 10,000 employees to lose their jobs. At the same time, there was a reduction in equipment investment by 2 digits.

Let's take a look at the world paper situation centered on the paper industry in the United States.

The status of the paper industry in the United States

The amount of paper used to remove heavy paper in papermaking is shown in Table 1.

Coated paper (mechanical) means coated paper containing more than 10% mechanical pulp, and coated paper (non-ground wood pulp) means coated paper with a mechanical pulp content of 10% or less. With respect to non-coated paper, its intention is the same.

Coated papers (machines) are generally double coated, and they have lower whiteness, are less expensive and lighter than coated papers (without wood pulp). Half of the coated paper (machinery) is used for commercial printing (product samples, mail-order advertising slips, folding advertisements, etc.) and journal printing.

Coated paper (without wood pulp) Although the mechanical pulp content was 10% or less, according to the classification of coated paper, NO.1, NO.2 contained no mechanical pulp at all. NO.3 contains a small amount of mechanically processed pulp, and NO.4 and NO.5 are basically the same as NO.3. Looking at the respective weights of these varieties, NO.1, NO.2 are 60 to 100 pounds, and NO.3 and NO.4 are 40 to 90 pounds. Most of the coated paper (75-85%) is high gloss and the rest is matt or embossed. In terms of whiteness, the high gloss NO.1 is 88, while the low-whiteness NO.4 is 77.

Non-coated paper (without wood pulp) is used for office paper, business printing (copying, computer, output), transaction forms, envelopes, text publications, and general printing. Table 1 shows the yield in 2001. For the previous year, except for coated paper (machinery), all were negative. This is because the demand for any type of paper, apart from falling, has increased as a result of imports. The rise in energy costs cannot avoid the rise in paper prices, but also because of the ease of import resulting from the appreciation of the US dollar. In terms of production capacity, the reduction in production has brought about a drop in the operating rate. In 2000, the operating rate of coated paper (without groundwood pulp) dropped to 84% to 79%.

The world's paper industry

The capacity of coated paper production in the world is ranked as shown in Table 2.

(to be continued)