Press Papers Europe: Collapse in demand calls for additional capacity cuts
News General news
The last nine months have seen an unprecedented collapse in demand for press papers in Europe and there is currently a large oversupply of production capacity despite the extensive capacity closures and rebuilds of recent years.
At present, there is approximately 12.5 million tonnes per year of newsprint production capacity in Europe, including improved grades, SC paper and LWC/MWC. Extrapolating the Euro-Graph figures for total European mill sales in the first four months to the whole year, the maximum sales volume is 9 million tonnes per year.
On the supply side, the Heinzel Laakirchen, Mondi Duino and Stora Enso Anjala mills together have at least 750,000 t/y of capacity shut down, plus the long outage of a 260,000 t/y PM at Norske Skog Saugbrugs. There is a gap of around 2.5 million tonnes per year of production capacity for which there is no demand.
