Market OUTLOOK
On global tissue markets, pulp demand, and the looming recession Article by Hawkins Wright
Since 2009, the use of bleached chemical market pulp in the tissue sector has grown from 13Mt to 23.6MT; tissue has accounted for 95% of BCP demand growth in the last ten years. This remarkably steady expansion over the past decade is driven in part by supportive global consumer trends and economic growth, but also because the tissue production is largely non-integrated.
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ince 2009, the use of bleached chemical market pulp in the tissue sector has grown from 13Mt to 23.6MT; tissue has accounted for 95% of BCP demand growth in the last ten years. Some 40% of all bleached chemical market pulp shipments went to the tissue industry last year as the sector’s global output surpassed 38Mt. This compares to just 27% of all BCP shipments in 2009, when tissue production totalled 28.4Mt worldwide. This remarkably steady expansion over the past decade is driven in part by supportive global consumer trends and economic growth, but also because the tissue production is largely non-integrated.
With the world on the brink of a major recession, the fate of pulp markets looks more tied to that of tissue markets than ever before. Even during the re- cession of 2009, tissue production grew by 0.5%, and quickly recovered to average 3.4% p.a. in the decade that followed. In this month’s Industry Focus, we offer an overview of the sector’s fundamentals and try to gauge the extent to which tissue can shield pulp markets from a protracted downturn.
MARKET GROWTH Tissue markets can be segmented either by region or by end-use: at-home (AH) or away-from-home (AfH). Regional differences abound, particularly between mature and emerging markets. Note that we use production figures (as reported by associations, complemented with our own estimates) as PAPERFIRST MAG SPRING 2020
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