Major paper price hikes headed your way

Global catastrophes causing a lack of supply will drive price increases over the coming months.

At PaperlinX Merchanting Australia, customers have been sent notification of the intended rises last week. According to Rohan Dean, group strategic sourcing manager, an increase of around 5 per cent for commodity grades will take effect in early May. He warned that it will not end there.

“We are clearly making it known that we expect further increases around July [this year] as the next wave comes through,” he said.

Dean believes that the global pulp situation is a contributing factor to this. “Pulp has gone up dramatically,” he said. “There has been a lack of supply from different areas in Europe because of very cold conditions, which has meant delays in shipments.”

It is a similar story at KW Doggett, where managing director, Simon Doggett, confirmed that price increases are about to take place. “We have increases on some grades for early May, followed by further increases in early July,” he said. “We are trying to minimise the severity of the increase in the short-term and take the volatility out of the increase as much as we can.”

He predicts May will see an increase of 5 per cent from KW Dogget, though the July increases have the potential to be “quite severe.”

David Bull, director of CPI Group, said that the group was still deciding how to implement these price rises and was aware of increases from the majority of suppliers.