United States

The North American market for recovered fibre has softened in recent months. Lower prices have been recorded in almost all regions, especially for OCC and mixed paper but also for higher grades such as sorted office paper. This weakening in May and June follows several months of either increasing or stable prices.

On the flip side, there has been some improved interest in OCC and DLK exports from the US west coast and prices seem to be strengthening for mixed paper shipments from the US east coast. Meanwhile, Latin America is showing decent interest in tonnage from the east coast.

RISI’s editor/price reporter posted recently on LinkedIn: “For the first time this year, prices for US old corrugated containers (OCC) decreased in nearly all US regions as demand dips during spring maintenance and market-related downtime among the largest producers in the US. Prices declined US$ 5-10 per ton in May, according to Fastmarkets’ monthly survey and pricing report published on May 5. Export prices for OCC, too, fell with demand and another month of tariff scares that put the ball in the buyer’s court for May orders.”

June brought more price drops - but only in certain regions such as the Southwest and the Midwest, according to RISI/Fastmarkets.

Domestic mills in the USA are backing off their orders and are even trying to turn away contracted tonnage because of lower demand and thus high recovered fibre inventories.

Suppliers are saying that prices could possibly continue to deteriorate for several months to come, fuelling nervousness among buyers and sellers.

Tariffs have lowered consumer confidence in new expenditure through employment uncertainty and rumours surrounding inflation. This tariff-led reduction in consumer spending has become more apparent, creating a domino effect across the entire supply chain. As noted previously, lower consumer expenditure ultimately leads to lower demand for paper packaging.

There have been permanent shutdowns at some huge paper mills, including most recently Georgia-Pacific. This adds to downtime and reduced capacity utilisation elsewhere; by way of example, RISI’s editor/price reporter recently quoted sources suggesting a major recycled bleach pulp producer in the Midwest was planning to operate for just 10 days in June - and that this would be for the third month in a row.

As mentioned in the previous Mirror report, these losses have been counterbalanced to some extent by new or resurrected mills, built as greenfield paper mills or older or shuttered mills converted to 100% recycled containerboard paper mills. However, it is unlikely that this new capacity is making up for closures or downtime elsewhere.

The general state of the paper business is simply not pretty. According to the April 2025 report from the American Forest & Paper Association, year-to-date shipments versus the same period in 2024 were down 3% for packaging papers and down 7.6% for printing/writing papers. And as mentioned above, many doubt that the bottom has yet been reached.