HIGHLIGHTS
- The price of paper, carton, and packaging continued to increase due to lack of raw materials, increased purchasing demand and increased paper production costs.
- The annual growth rate from now to 2026 of the global stone paper industry is 2.6%
FULL ARTICLE
The biggest cause of the paper price fever is the lack of old paper and waste paper. During nearly 2 years of the covid pandemic raging, businesses did not need to print ads, and the volume of printed newspapers sold at stalls also decreased sharply. The decline in old paper and waste paper leads to a shortage of raw materials for paper mills because three-quarters of paper materials are from recycled old paper.
At the same time, the demand for paper in Asia and the US has increased sharply, especially for carton packaging, due to a sudden increase in online shopping since the pandemic. The final reason is the cost of buying chemicals, electricity, and all the cost of paper production has skyrocketed.
In order to solve the above problem, some businesses have switched to using paper made from stone. This potential product line promises to change the current situation of the paper industry.
Paper production currently does not need trees, but only needs excess marble, obtained from the process of making bricks and building houses. Worth mentioning, the paper products created from stone have high quality and durability, especially waterproof.
The global stone paper market is still quite new and there are many opportunities for new businesses to enter. However, barriers to entry are still very high. For example, Lung Meng, winner of the Taiwan Excellence Award, an annual award honoring businesses that have made outstanding strides in research and development, marketing, design, quality and manufacturing, to create It took 17 years of research to come up with the perfect production process for stone-based paper. The amount of investment amounted to nearly 50 million USD.
Mr.Henry Liang, Vice Chairman of Lung Meng Group said “We use crushed stone powder to make paper materials. As a result, we do not need to use acid to bleach paper, which is harmful to the environment. Each ton of paper made from stone can reduce up to 900 kg of gas. CO2 compared to conventional paper production.”
According to a forecast by market research unit IMarc, the annual growth rate from now to 2026 of the global stone paper industry is 2.6%. This number is expected to increase even more in the future as countries and consumers pay more attention to environmentally friendly products that can be reused many times.
Hong Dao
FURTHER READING:
Supply chain bottlenecks for pulp and toilet paper