Price trend

According to the data monitoring of SunSirs, the spot prices of softwood pulp and hardwood pulp continued to decline this week. The average market price of softwood pulp in Shandong was 6,790 RMB/ton on March 10, down 1.74% from the average price of 6,910 RMB/ton on March 5. The average market price of hardwood pulp in Shandong Province was 5,690 RMB/ton on March 10, down 1.9% from he average price of 5,800 RMB/ton on March 5.

Analysis review

From the observation of market changes, the price decline of softwood pulp and hardwood pulp continued to expand this week. In terms of supply, the cumulative import volume of pulp from January to February was 5.509 million tons, up 4.7% year on year, and the supply was slowly recovering. Arauco's new capacity of 1.56 million tons of hardwood pulp had been put into production, and 2.1 million tons of UPM hardwood pulp is expected to be put into production at the end of the first quarter. The release of hardwood pulp capacity will drag down the price of softwood pulp.

In terms of demand, the domestic spot pulp market had a common trading situation, and the sentiment of the operators entering the market was light, and most of them executed contract orders. The spot market was dominated by wait-and-see, and the pace of shipment was slow. The starting load of the downstream base paper enterprises had slightly increased, but most of them mainly purchased domestic cheap wood pulp.

In terms of futures, on March 10, the opening price of the Shanghai Stock Exchange pulp futures sp2305 contract was 6,224 RMB/ton, and the latest price was 6,120 RMB/ton, with a daily decline of 3.01%, with 221,100 transactions and 179,736 positions.

Market outlook

The wood pulp analysts of SunSirs believe that under the circumstances of high external market and lower RMB exchange rate, importers generally faced greater loss pressure. Before the demand is significantly improved, the downstream will maintain a passive destocking state, and it is expected that the spot price of wood pulp will remain sorting out weakly in the short term.

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