After a hike in September, prices for recycled corrugated case material in Germany have not risen further in October. The position of suppliers has reportedly not been strong enough despite satisfactory capacity utilisation rates.
In October, the majority of recycled corrugated case material producers in Germany wanted to "add another dollop” to the hike they had already achieved in September. By the middle of the month, however, suppliers had to concede that no across-the-board hike would be forthcoming. Although there were a few contracts with a mark-up, they had failed to widely establish the entire price hike.
Although inventory levels in the industry were low and most factories claimed to have maintained rather good capacity utilisation rates, containerboard producers were not in a strong enough position to implement a price increase from the previous month’s levels.
Observers attribute this in part to the fact that converters had stocked up their warehouses in advance of the announced price hike. In addition, activity levels in the local corrugated industry were satisfactory at most. Furthermore, suppliers from Southern Europe were said to be pushing low-priced offers on the German market and thus having an impact on pricing. Producers had simply not had the "guts” and the situation was compounded by a lack of consistency in the implementation, EUWID was told.
⇒ This article is an excerpt from EUWID's report on the German paper market. The EUWID Price Watch Germany for October will be published in EUWID Pulp and Paper no. 45 on 7 November.
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