The German market for sack kraft paper saw receding demand and prices in the first quarter of the current year .
Producers startet the year with unchanged prices but began to reduce them, particularly for brown grades in the course of January, depending on what buyers were already paying.
"It was obvious that prices would fall but not at this speed,” a market player told EUWID. On the other hand, the "massive and explosive increase in selling prices” last year was no longer "conformant with the market,” he said. Worried about keeping production running, many converters in 2022 reportedly purchased whatever they could at virtually any price and are now left sitting on substantial inventories of expensively procured paper.
⇒ This is an excerpt from the German paper and board market to be published in EUWID Packaging Markets 7/2023
