Russian Demandattracts Paper Tigers

摘要

The Finnish paper industry's luck and misfortune in the east are the two sides of the same coin. Regardless of its huge forest reserves, Russia still continues to be a developing country in terms of its paper industry, and is now struggling to rid itself of this predicament through higher roundwood export duties. This is extremely bad news for the Finns who have relied on processing imported roundwood for a long time. However, Russia is currently suffering from severe problems in its own paper industry, which makes it a promising growing market, for the Finnish vendors' high-quality paper grades in particular. Even today, there is no single paper machine producing coated paper in Russia. Nevertheless, the future of the Russian paper market is far more interesting than its recent past or the current situation. On the one hand, Russia has consumed remarkably little paper up until now, compared to its size in particular, but it has doubled its paper and board consumption between 2000 and 2007, surpassing the level of seven million tonnes. On the other hand, the volume of imported paper has almost tripled during this decade and is currently over two million tonnes.