Several companies of the Italian paper industry have stopped production at their mills for a period of four days. Italian paper industry association Assocarta told EUWID the companies were helping to lower Italy's gas consumption and offset the impact of the country's gas supply problems. Supply difficulties resulted from reduced imports from Russia combined with an increase in consumption in Italy due to the cold weather conditions in southern Europe in the past week, explained Assocarta. The association said that production had been stopped at 6 am on 7 February and would restart at the same time on 11 February.
It is estimated that around 70% of Italy's paper industry is currently taking downtime. Burgo, for instance, has confirmed production stoppages in all of its Italian sites which have a combined capacity of 2,375,000 tpy. The company said that activities not related to paper production would continue normally. Deliveries were currently made from stock.