With 1.8% GDP-growth in the US and 1.5% expansion in Western Europe, paper and paperboard consumption will show a fall in both key regions in 2011, according to the Finnish price indexing firm Foex. With US GDP at, hopefully, 2% in 2012 but with a negative growth in Europe, the outlook for paper and paperboard demand is not good in 2012, even if the November numbers from the US show that the losses have moderated, at least for one month. Major events, like the US presidential elections and the Olympic Games will support advertising and the printed media, even if the slice for paper media will be only very thin.
CEPIPRINT statistics for November just came out showing a 6.9% decline in the estimated European demand for the total of woodcontaining grades against November 2010. Exports continued to do well with an 18% gain over November 2010.
While paper consumption and production continue to struggle in the industrialized world and while the structural changes in the printing and writing paper sector risk gradually spreading also into the emerging economies, total paper and paperboard production will continue to grow outside the industrialized countries. With 7-8% GDP-growth in China and India, the number of people with sufficient income level to consume paper is rapidly growing. This will support the demand even for printing and writing papers but especially in tissue and packaging products. The likely entry of Russia into WTO during next summer will help to give the international trade another boost and, with it, help sustain the growth in packaging products. In spite of the major problems threatening paper demand in the industrialized world and the slowdown of the demand growth rate in the group of emerging economies, the world paper and paperboard deliveries may still exceed 400 million tons for the first time in 2012.
