Overview of Vietnam’s paper market in 2018 – Part 2. Pulp

The total amount of imported pulp on the Vietnamese market including BHKP, BSKP, BCTMP, UKP, FLUFF in 2018 reached 339,387 tons, an increase of 8.0% compared to the same period in 2017, reaching an average of 28,282 tons per month.

Imported pulp for Vietnam market in 2018 was diverse as it was sourced from 16 countries. Among those, the North American region has the largest supply of 137,451 tons, accounting for 40.5%; Latin American region supplied 112,000 tons, accounting for 33.0%; Europe supply 45,138 tons, accounting for 13.3%; Asia region supplied 45,477 tons, accounting for 13.4%.

The total import turnover of all kinds of pulp reached 263,368 million USD, up by 20.7% as compared to the same period of 2017. The average price of imported pulp in 2018 was 780 USD per ton, up by 12.4% as compared to the same period. The average price for 2017 was 694 USD per ton.

The demand for Vietnam’s pulp in the past 3 years has an average growth of about 10% per year. This increase is mainly due to the growth in printing paper production, writing paper and tissue paper. The pulp production capacity in Vietnam is about 210,000 tons per year of short fiber pulp (BHKP) and only meets about 56% of the domestic demand. Meanwhile, 100% of long fiber BSKP and BCTMP must be imported.

It is expected that by the year from 2021 to 2023, the production capacity of short fiber powder BHKP will increase by 750,000 tons per year, BCTPM thermo-chemical powder will increase by 70,000 tons per year. Also in this period, short fiber powder production is expected to meet domestic demand and start involving into the export market.

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