A letter from India

摘要

Like all other sectors, paper and packaging businesses are badly affected due to the pandemic Coronavirus in India. The lock-down in India was announced all on a sudden on the 25th March 2020 because of fear of spread of Coronavirus in the country without allowing industries to plan production and business. Paper mills having integrated pulp mill, which is the case with the big paper mills, are able to manage to run somehow without stoppage of production. However, mills dependent on waste papers in particular, are unable to continue their production because of shortage of raw materials, which are mostly imported from USA and Europe. The pandemic is there in these countries also and exporting waste paper has totally stopped in these countries. It is learnt that because of the fear of infection of Coronavirus, the waste paper piles have been burnt or land-filled in USA. In fact, the major import of waste paper is from China and soon after, the Corona virus started there, the supply of waste paper, totally stopped from January onwards. The paper was comparatively at a cheaper price than other countries. In any case, the supply of waste paper from abroad, has totally stopped now. When lock-down 2.0 was announced, a few paper mills diluted their inventories to fulfil the demand of essential goods packaging.