In response to this situation, many companies have decided on temporary and/or permanent stoppages, such as Emin Leydier and Smurfit Kappa. Otor Papeterie de Rouen is going to shut for 5 days as of May 01 and 2 day stoppages are scheduled for other sites.

Other technical stoppages are also scheduled and extending to Germany in SCA’s mills in Aschaffenburg and Witzenhausen, with 4 days planned. In Spain, the word is that Saïca’s Saragosse mill will be shutting but in this case for industrial relations reasons.

In terms of virgin fiber based corrugated case materials, brown Kraftliner prices have remained unchanged in April as American imports are still very insignificant to France, because of technical specifications and service. With the fruit and vegetable season getting underway, French corrugators can no longer continue replacing kraftliner with recycled paper and are asking for deliveries on the day or even in the hour as fresh products will not wait!

White kraftliner prices, which had started to pick up, are also now unchanged and one seller believes that despite the poor economic context, price rise announcements by producers cannot be excluded as they are still struggling to rebuild their margins.

In terms of recycled fiber based corrugated case material, producers acknowledged that prices have dropped 10 to 25 euros/tonne since the beginning of the year, depending on the market, and these again are official prices, with spot readily available and anything is thus possible in terms of prices.

Corrugated box. After a very poor March, sellers report that business picked up during April and that the order books are looking better.

This recovery in demand has helped consolidate the still uncertain increases applied, sometimes imposed, earlier during the first quarter. We can currently report that the levels as stated in our market prices are in fact being fully applied for most customers. There is, at the moment, no talk of further increases, as for the drift in paper prices, this is not having any impact on corrugated board prices for May.

Sack kraft: There was a slowdown at the beginning of the year but French buyers believe that there was nothing unusual in this and the construction sector, a major consumer of this product type, is not really suffering. The situations in Spain, Great Britain and Germany are very different with the crisis getting a grip in the sector. However, to put the sack segment slowdown in context, our contacts also point out that work in the construction sector is also closely linked to the weather; the winter of 2006 - 2007 was a particularly mild one which meant that construction work did not slow, whilst that of 2007 - 2008 was less so and thus slowed work. For whatever reason, whilst activity is not as dynamic as it was last year prices are currently unaffected.

Foreign trade and consumption: A complete turnaround in the situation

With the restarting of Smurfit Kappa’s Facture mill, the French foreign trade balance in kraftliner in the first two months of the year was back in the black. The story is not the same for recycled fiber based grades for which the balance was in deficit to the tune of 17,811 tonnes compared with a surplus last year of 8,621 tonnes.

The exclusive update on apparent consumption compiled by Pap’Argus shows that over the first two months this was up 3.8%. As was remarked by our correspondents, orders did start to drop off at the end of February. The pick-up in exports corresponds with the recovery of activity in France whilst the drop in imports is already a sign of the lack of vigor in consumption.

A Europe at variable speeds

The supply of global statistics is particularly slow but it is also full of information. Cepi has just released its output statistics for 2007 and this gives an overview of the behavior of the various European economies in Cepi (European Union + Switzerland and Norway). We will have to wait a few months for the consumption figures.