Australia’s paper industry is seeing more than a 12% hike in demand for Australian produced packaging paper, and pine plantations need to expand as a result. Source: ABC Rural
That is according to Industry Edge, a market and trade consulting firm who conducts a strategic review of the industry each year.
Managing director of the company, Tim Woods said the significant increase for 2015-16 was down to more food being produced and packaged with corrugated paper.
“There’s no doubt that the very significant spike in demand over the last year for packaging papers has come about because corrugated box production has grown,” he said.
“That’s grown off the back of really significant additional growth in food consumption and food movement.”
Mr Woods believed there was no “substantial evidence” to show that there has been a movement away from plastics, but an increased focus on sustainability was having an influence.
“There’s obviously that sustainability driver that sees people being much more committed to ensuring that the product that they package their food in is able to be recycled.
“They’re looking at cardboard boxes because they know that they can be recycled.”
Corrugated boxes are made mostly from recycled paper from businesses and households.
Pine wood off-cuts make up about 25-30% of the make up of corrugated boxes.
Mr Woods indicated that in part due to the housing construction boom, there was significant pressure on pine wood products.
“Certainly that’s provided some extra wood chip availability as a by-product from that sawn wood production process, but what it doesn’t mean is that there’s an endless supply of wood that’s already in the ground,” he said.
“That’s part of the supply side constraint on the further development of packaging materials.
“That’s one of the challenges to expanding production in the future and expanding use in the future, you’ve got to have the fibre available.”
Mr Woods said more pine trees would need to be planted to meet future growth.
Future growth in demand for Australian packaging paper is a possibility according to Mr Woods, but a plateau of demand was more likely.
“The main reason for that is that the volume of supply that’s available is almost at its current limits they’re starting to be under a little bit of pressure,” he said.
“It’s hard to see where any market demand comes from, but Australian food production continues to grow and Australian food shipments in particular continue to grow, something is going to have to provide the packaging.”
