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US pulp & paper chemicals demand to reach 20.5 million tons in the year 2006

¡¾2002.04.15¡¿

US pulp & paper chemicals demand to reach 20.5 million tons in the year 2006

Demand for pulp and paper chemicals is forecast to advance 2.4 percent annually from a weak 2001 base to 20.5 million tons in the year 2006. Growth in market value will be considerably faster due to a shift in product mix toward higher-value chemicals. As a result, value demand will grow 4.5 percent per annum to $7.6 billion in 2006. Gains will be most positive in the specialty additives segment, due to the paper industry?s desire to reduce production costs, improve environmental compliance and maximize productivity. Lower-value commodity chemicals will record less robust gains in volume terms, although advances in value terms will be mixed.
Bleaching chemicals, for example, will exceed average growth in value, the result of increasing demand for more expensive bleaching products, such as oxygen, ozone and hydrogen peroxide. These and other trends are presented in Pulp & Paper Chemicals, a new study from The Freedonia Group, Inc., a Cleveland-based industrial market research firm.

The amount of chemicals used per ton of paper and paperboard produced has been trending downward in recent years, due primarily to the declining demand for several low-value, high-volume chemicals, particularly chlorine, caustic soda and sodium sulfate. Process changes and the increasing use of chemical recycling have also reduced per ton usage. This trend is expected to stabilize and then reverse, now that chlorine is completely phased out and the reduction in demand for other chemicals is decelerating, coupled with above-average growth in some fillers and specialty chemicals.

The use of increasing amounts of recycled paper and board will boost demand for a wide variety of chemicals. As the pulp and paper industry continues to increase its dependence on recycled fibers for both environmental and economic reasons, this will require the addition of greater amounts of chemicals, including fillers, bleaching and deinking chemicals, and a range of water treatment chemicals designed to remove the significant quantities of impurities and contaminants which accompany increased recycled fiber use.

Printing and writing papers are expected to record above average growth through 2006, thus impacting demand for chemicals. These higher quality coated and uncoated papers, which are used in magazines, catalogs, annual reports and as computer and copier papers, have a much higher chemical and mineral content than slower growing grades, such as tissue and newsprint. In the paperboard segment, gains will be greatest in recycled board.

Pulp & Paper Chemicals (published 03/2002, 268 pages) is available for $3,800 from The Freedonia Group, Inc., 767 Beta Drive, Cleveland, OH 44143-2326. For further details, please contact Corinne Gangloff by phone 440.684.9600, fax 440.646.0484 or e-mail pr@freedoniagroup.com. Information may also be obtained through www.freedoniagroup.com.

Source: the Freedonia

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