Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Containerboard Prices Remain Stable

Recent reports on market pricing for Containerboard point to staple pricing of approximately $540/ton for June shipments. The major manufacturers are closely monitoring inventory levels (actually down 96,000 tons) and lower production to keep pricing in check. Further, industry analysist Mark Wilde comments, additional permanent closures appear inevitable given the the weak domestic demand and estimate of over 4Million tons of excess capacity. He also reported box shipments declined 10.7% .
Producers continue to take extensive downtime. Coy Paper estimated 1.4Million tons in Q2
(1.7million tons in Q1). Smurfit recently announced 524,000 downtime at its Jacksonville, FL plant.

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