Recycled board producers supplying the German market are setting their sights on a price hike. But not everyone is convinced the increase will be pushed through.
The dominant issue on the German market for cartonboard and folding cartons in April is the announced price hike for recycled board. Some producers had informed their customers about hikes for grey board and GD before Easter and further suppliers followed suit in early April. The increases are already set to take effect for orders from mid-April in some cases.
Even though some board manufacturers are currently reporting that talks are going well and that converters have signed the first contracts with the new conditions, it is still too early to make any conclusive statements about the final realisation of the announced mark-ups. Quite a few converters told EUWID that they believed the planned hikes could not be implemented throughout the market and that prices would remain unchanged. "The good capacity utilisation at the board producers is not being driven by end customers”, it is often argued.
The view of the recycled board industry is naturally quite different. The positive trend seen in incoming orders and order backlogs had become established in the first quarter of the year, with the longer delivery times for both grades providing clear-cut evidence of this, they argued.
