Germany: magazine paper suppliers report short order books and soft demand

摘要

Players on the German market for magazine and catalogue paper are not satisfied with how business is going. This is true for both paper factories and printing companies. Weak demand is leading to short order books and trouble with capacity utilisation and, in some cases, has necessitated temporary idling of their production equipment. At the beginning of the second quarter, price talks for unbleached kraftliner were taking place once again, and converters were partly successful to get prices lowered by another € 10/t. In the uncoated woodfree paper segment, the price slide came to a halt in April, the same was true for coated grades. After an unsatisfactory January and a halfway decent February, the German market for coreboard picked up again in late February and has been on track ever since, according to industry insiders. Producers say that delivery times stretch to as long as three weeks and they want to attempt price hikes in the coming weeks.