Along with the great expansion of China's paper & board production capacity, improvement of product quality and changes in raw material supply, the industry's demand for wood pulp is increasing. According to its 2021 Annual Report, China Paper Association (CPA) confirmed that industry production of paper-grade wood pulp increased in an annual average of 10% in the past decade and reached 18.09 million metric tons by 2021. In addition, over 30 million/mtpy new wood pulping capacities have been slated, in construction or completed since 2021, showing the huge expansion prospects of the industry.
However, China does not have sufficient forest land to support the growing demand for pulping and still needs to import a large amount of wood chips. In particular, imports of hardwood chips surged from 1 million metric tons in 2008 to 13.20 million metric tons in 2020 and hit 14.80 million metric tons in 2021. As the momentum continues unabated and refreshing historical records, shipment arrivals in the first four months of 2022 became 10% more than the corresponding period of 2021 and accounted for 56% of hardwood imports in the world! During this period, the source of supply also changed. From high-yield fiber (HYF) hardwood chips primarily from Australia and South America, China's sourcing has switched to low-yield fiber (LYF) hardwood chips which are largely available in such Asian countries as Vietnam and Indonesia, showing Chinese pulp mills' efforts to reduce consumption of chemicals to comply with environmental protection requirement and lower production cost in pulp production.
Industry professionals predict that in view of the limitations of recycled fiber resources and quality, China's paper industry will need more virgin wood pulp to support the continuous increase in paper and board production, development of product varieties and improvement of product quality. Therefore, the industry’s future sourcing of wood chips will not only grow by volume and diversify in species, but also expand to multiple regions of the world.
