Reports from China Customs showed the country's market pulp imports in the first nine months of 2020 totaled 22.60 million/mt, growing +14.1% from the same period of 2019. The strong rise was partly fueled by price declines in the world market, which saved Chinese importers billions of dollars! The 22.60 million/mt imports included 6.54 million/mt of BSK (+0.3%), 10.01 million/mt of BHK (+16.67%) and 820,000/mt of UKP (+43.9%). As quite a number of executing market pulp orders from China were placed at competitive prices in the global market before end-September, prior to the price increases demanded by the suppliers in recent weeks, analysts predicted that China's market pulp imports from overseas in full year 2020 would set a new record by hitting 29.5 million metric tons or more.

Analysts also believe that growth of China's wood pulp consumption will remain active, in view of more virgin or mixed fiber based paper and board production projects launched from 2019, covering fine paper, coated SBS board, tissue paper and kraft-top linerboard. Such increase has well covered the output declines in newsprint, low-end printing/writing paper and recycled boxboard. Even stricken by coronavirus, which put business operation to a halt for months, China's paper and board production, excluding processing of imported base paper and board, was able to reach 68.44 million metric tons in the first seven months of 2020, dipping only -3.3% from the corresponding period of 2019. Under the general revival of economic activities, which leads to a 1.8% growth of industrial production in the first 10 months over that of 2019, it is expected that China's paper and board production in 2020 will further increase from the 2019 level. As the industry consumed 35.81 million metric tons of wood pulp to help production of 107.65 million metric tons of paper and board in 2019, analysts predict that 2020’s full year wood pulp consumption will exceed 36 million metric tons.