BIR World Mirror on Recovered Paper – Issue January 2026: Weak underlying demand casts long shadow across markets
A concise summary of the BIR World Mirror on Recovered Paper – Quarterly Report January 2026. Full version with detailed market reports available in the Members Only section of the BIR website.
Without a meaningful recovery in demand, notably for packaging, recovered fibre markets both domestically and in the various leading export channels are likely to remain fragile, particularly among the lower grades. This is one of the main takeaways from the latest BIR World Mirror publication released by the global recycling organisation’s Paper Division.
Europe’s recovered paper market was under persistent pressure in late 2025 owing to a combination of weak recycled containerboard demand, cautious buying behaviour and a steadily narrowing set of export options. In late autumn, China effectively halted imports of dry-ground recycled pulp and thus removed an important indirect outlet for recovered fibre.
This came at a time when new recycled containerboard capacity was already weighing on the system and when operating rates were generally subdued.
In early winter, OCC recorded a sharp price drop as buyers focused primarily on inventory reduction rather than on chasing additional volume. And despite question marks over supply into the longer term, deinking and office grades also remained under pressure from cautious buying and inventory management.
The tighter Chinese controls on recycled pulp imports also created an imbalance across Asian fibre flows. Imported OCC prices across Asia came under heavy pressure, creating a buyer’s market for several weeks. India’s demand for imported fibre was capped by soft domestic box demand and the depreciation of the Indian rupee. Turkey was positioned as a release valve for exporters rather than as a growth driver.
Domestic mill demand in China and South East Asia was described as tepid in the final months of 2025, thereby broadening the price gaps between regions. These differentials could not be fully bridged even by sharp declines in shipping costs through parts of the year: container freight costs from Europe to South East Asia fell from, typically, around US$ 500 per unit to US$ 300 or even lower.
In the USA, sentiment has remained generally low in late 2025 and 2026, with consumers’ reluctance to spend on anything other than the essentials expected to keep retail momentum sluggish at least for the first half of the current year. The closure of around 4 million tons of annual mill capacity during the course of last year has dampened domestic demand for recycled fibre and pushed down prices, especially for OCC and mixed paper. The margins for MRFs and paper recycling plants are being squeezed as collection and baling costs are often higher than selling prices - an unsustainable situation which will ultimately lead to increased landfilling or incineration.
To end on a positive note for the paper and board sector, dozens of well-known brands in the USA are said to be scrambling to convert from plastic to paper packaging. While this is partly because of legislative and retailer pressure, another significant factor is high extended producer responsibility fees in many states which want to penalise those producers who are distributing their products in plastic packaging with low recycling rates.
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With contributions from its members, BIR publishes periodical commodity reports under the label "BIR World Mirror". These detailed reports exist for Non-Ferrous Metals, Ferrous, Stainless Steel / Alloys, Paper, Plastics and Latin America and provide BIR members with up-to-date information on the respective commodity or market segment.
The report on Non-Ferrous Metals appears once every two months, whereas Ferrous, Stainless Steel, Paper and Plastics are published quarterly. Latin America is covered twice per year.