ArticleManagerDon’t you think?
Buying paper lately, it seems to be more and more expensive?
I often find that I obviously bought a large box of paper, the price is dozens, it seems to be cheap,
But get it,
Discoveries are all mini versions.
Isn’t this a price increase in disguise?
In fact, the rise in the paper industry has become a reality.
On October 11th, Nine Dragons Paper issued six price increase letters in one day, and for a time, Luoyang Paper was expensive.
The Dongguan, Taicang, Tianjin, Quanzhou, Chongqing and Shenyang bases will implement new prices from October 13 and October 18, with a general increase in products
50 – 150
/Ton.
* Image source: China Paper Network
And the price increase, there are already clues,
During May and September this year, a number of paper companies issued a number of price increase letters. Among them, the prices of Dongguan, Taicang, Quanzhou, Tianjin and other bases under Nine Dragons Paper increased by about 50-150 yuan / ton.
All of a sudden, the data exploded, and some friends may not have reacted:
ND Paper?
It’s okay if it’s not clear, but do you know Zhang Yin in China?
She is known as China’s richest man in waste paper.
In 2007, she ranked 390th on Forbes’ list of the world’s billionaires, becoming the first richest woman in China at the time.
And ND Paper was founded by her at that time.
Currently, it is the second largest paper group in the world by capacity;
At the same time, it
It is also a leading enterprise in China’s papermaking
，
It accounts for about 14% of China’s total paper and board production capacity.
This time leading companies took the lead in price increases, which means
The general rise of the entire paper price market.
Why is the price always rising?
From the price increase letter, it can be seen that due to “
The impact of rising prices of various raw and auxiliary materials such as waste paper and coal
“Costs continue to rise”.
Therefore, it is also a “helpless move”!
After all, these years have been eventful.
Recently, by coincidence, there was a shortage of electricity, and production restrictions were delayed, which affected the operating rate.
However, the most important thing is due to the problem of raw material imports, due to
epidemic situation
result in
Relying on imported pulp and waste paper supply is insufficient
And triggered.
The imported pulp can not catch up with everyone’s paper demand, and the supply is far less than the demand.
This is not the price will go up!
In fact, the paper industry has been importing waste paper in large quantities. According to public data, in 2019, China’s annual cumulative consumption of waste pulp was 54.43 million tons, and the consumption of imported waste pulp was 24.09 million tons.
Other words
import
waste pulp consumption accounts for total waste pulp consumption,
Nearly forty percent.
That’s half as much!
No, it’s not scientific.
Think about it, from childhood to adulthood, the most used is scratch paper. A piece of math scratch paper can end in less than a week.
If all of us high school students folded up the used draft paper, at least it would be as high as the Eiffel Tower, right?
Why import?
No, I donated all the scratch paper at home!
Actually, things are more complicated than we think.
Although this papermaking can use waste paper, isn’t the most basic raw material still wood?
And the forest coverage rate in our country is not high.
At the end of 2020, China’s forest coverage rate was only 23.04%;
This compares with 64% in Japan, 61% in South Korea and 44% in Canada.
Therefore, compared with the state of high forest coverage and abundant raw material resources in the world’s major pulp and paper countries,
China’s domestic forest coverage is low, from the most basic raw materials are lost at the starting line.
Second, recycled fibers such as waste paper are recycled.
Because forest resources are very limited, and the concept of environmental protection is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, China has begun to implement various measures in recent years to promote the reuse of waste paper
The use of recycled fibers such as waste paper as raw materials is currently the main way to make paper.
The amount of waste paper in our country is undoubtedly huge, but the problem is,
China’s waste paper recycling rate is low, only 46.5%.
* Image source: Screenshot of waste paper recycling in the global paper industry
Compared to the United States, the recycling rate of waste paper reached 66.2% and in Australia was as high as 77%.
China’s low recycling rate means that a large amount of waste paper is wasted.
The low recycling rate is related to the fact that we do not do a good job in garbage separation. After all, garbage is not sorted well, how to recycle waste paper?
Compared with foreign countries, such as Japan, its garbage classification is really needless to say, far and near famous. There is a very detailed classification, and some areas such as “Ruzawa City” are even as high as 70 categories.;
At the same time, a sound legal system and system have been established to ensure implementation.
The perfect garbage classification system abroad not only ensures the quantity of imported waste paper, but also ensures the quality.
Imported waste paper, in the case of quality assurance, the price is not much different from domestic waste paper.
This is related to the fact that China’s waste material recycling system is not perfect, and there are many waste paper purchase links.
We often have the experience of handling express boxes, if there are too many, we often accumulate first, passing by and seeing people who specialize in collecting waste and selling them to them.
They often carry a large woven sack on their backs and a bunch of cardboard boxes behind their hands, walking slowly through the alleys;
These are often waste pickers, taking the waste to the recycling point to sell cardboard.
At waste collection points, there are large and small, and small recycling points are sold to large recycling stations.
In this way, there are many overall acquisition links, layer by layer markup,
No wonder the price of domestic waste paper in the end sells the same as imported waste paper.
You said that the price is almost the same, but the important thing is that the quality is not as good as others.
At present, China only carries out simple recycling of waste paper, and all kinds of waste paper are mixed together, resulting in uneven quality of recycled pulp, and low-quality recycled pulp is difficult to use to make high-grade cardboard and paper.
Plus, in 2011 the state canceled
VAT refund preferential policy for recycling waste paper resources
, which also exacerbates the situation.
The lack of uniform quality requirements and monitoring standards is also partly to blame.
To sum up, the import of waste paper has an objective lack of raw materials caused by China’s forest cover;
It is also because of the lack of garbage classification, the lack of standards, and the non-standard problem of the overall industry, resulting in high prices and uneven quality; The imported waste paper with stable quality and similar price has undoubtedly become a better choice for papermakers.
However, relying on imports all the time is not a long-term solution, just look at the epidemic and how hard it hits.
Therefore, the state has also been trying to change the passive situation.
In April 2017, the Central Work Conference reviewed and approved the Implementation Plan on Banning the Entry of Foreign Garbage and Promoting the Reform of the Solid Waste Import Management System, which officially opened the curtain on the import control of solid waste.
* Image source: People’s Daily News screenshot
Subsequently, in the field of imported waste paper, the Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China has successively issued a series of policies and regulations such as prohibiting the import of mixed waste paper and increasing the quality control standards of imported waste paper (reducing the impurity rate to 0.5%).
From 2021, China will completely ban the import of solid waste, and the Ministry of Ecology and Environment will no longer accept import applications for solid waste.
Under a series of measures, net imports of waste paper plummeted from 28.4962 million tons in 2016 to 6.8913 million tons in 2020.
But if I want to say, these are not enough, after all, most of the waste paper recycling in China is private.
Therefore, if these individual scrap buyers can be appropriately given some policy preferences
, so that waste recycling on the road of enterprise operation, which can more promote the standardization and standardization of waste paper recycling behavior.
In the era of shortage of resources, I sincerely hope that China’s waste paper can embark on the road of standardization and get better and better~
Resources:
China’s waste paper recycling rate increased to 49% Consumer Daily Network
Waste paper recycling in the global paper industry Li Yufeng
China Paper Industry 2020 Report China Paper Association
Research on the utilization of waste paper recycled fiber and biotechnology in fiber recycling MA Zhijuan