The outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020 severely restricted the EU’s waste paper trade. Especially in April and may, the volume of waste paper exported by EU to the third countries outside EU decreased by 27% and 38% respectively compared with that in 2019. In the first half of 2020, the volume of waste paper exported by 27 EU member states decreased by 10% compared with that in 2019. This situation began to improve in the second half of the year and has maintained a strong upward trend. According to Eurostat data, the export of waste paper from the remaining 27 EU countries to the third country increased by more than 20% from July to December 2020, which not only completely offset the decrease in the first six months, but also increased by 4.5% to 6.1 million tons in 2020.
In addition, the export price of waste paper began to rebound rapidly after falling sharply at the beginning of the year. Although the price of a ton of paper in January and February was only 66-67 euro, the price of a ton of waste paper in May reached 128 euro, and the average price in the second half of the year was 106 euro. However, for the whole year, the total export value of waste paper decreased from 600 million euro to 581 million euro.
In recent years, the export flow pattern of waste paper has been changing continuously, and more exports have shifted from China to Southeast Asian countries and Turkey. In the past few years, exports to China have fallen sharply due to China’s import restrictions. According to Eurostat data, the export volume of 27 EU countries to China in 2016 was 5.1 million tons, but only 294000 tons by 2020. Moreover, demand in Vietnam and Thailand contracted strongly last year.
Post time: Apr-20-2021