Paper industry paradox

While Vietnam is the world's leading exporter of wood chips for pulp, the domestic paper industry is largely dependent on imported paper, both raw materials and finished products.

According to Mr. Vu Ngoc Bao, former Vice Chairman and General Secretary of the Vietnam Pulp and Paper Association (VPPA), starting from 2018, Vietnam has significantly increased the export volume of hardwood pulp chips (raw materials for paper processing) and surpassed Australia. becoming the country with the largest export volume in the world. Vietnam's wood chip exports have tended to increase during the past 15 years and reached a record high of about 10 million tons in 2018.

 

According to VPPA's statistics, in 2018, exports of paper and finished paper products reached 1.088 billion USD, up 50.0% compared to 2017. But imports of paper of all kinds and finished paper products had a turnover of 2.674 billion USD, up 13.8% compared to 2017. Each year, the whole country exports wood chips, collecting about 300 million USD. While the export price of wood chips to the 2 largest main markets, China and Japan, is only above and below 120 USD/ton and the price of buying raw materials directly from farmers is only about 1.2 million VND, the import price of pulp fluctuates at 1,000 USD/ton, 9-10 times higher than the selling price of wood chips.

This is really a paradox in Vietnam's paper and woodworking industry. We still export wood chips in large volumes while the paper industry is lacking raw materials, having to import pulp and recovered paper as raw materials for production.

Mr. Dang Van Son, Secretary General of VPPA, said that the world is encouraging the use of paper packaging instead of plastic, creating a strong increase in the demand for paper for packaging. The trend of increasing the use of packaging paper in trade is also currently increasing sharply. In addition, with the strong export growth trend in the past and future, the demand for packaging paper will always be high. In Vietnam, packaging paper currently accounts for nearly 50% of the total consumption of the entire paper industry and is also the most imported, accounting for 45% of the total paper import turnover.

To solve the problem of paper materials in the immediate future, Mr. Son said that recycled paper is a key input material of the paper industry, which plays an important role in environmental protection. saving natural resources. The reuse of paper scrap as raw materials brings many benefits to businesses and society such as reducing resource exploitation and deforestation. Producing paper from recycled paper helps reduce energy consumption, solid waste, wastewater, and emissions compared to producing from paper from virgin pulp.

According to preliminary estimates, the paper collection rate in Vietnam is only below the world average, about less than 40%. Therefore, Mr. Son said that it is necessary to encourage the collection and recycling of paper. In addition, it is necessary to create conditions for the import of recovered paper, the recovered paper should not be considered as scrap but must be considered as a raw material for production.

In order to make Vietnam's paper industry a strong and competitive industry in the domestic and international markets, it is necessary to prioritize the development of expansion investment projects, increase capacity and new large-scale projects, well protect the environment. "Producing pulp from wood chips is the stage that brings the greatest added value to the paper industry," Mr. Son said about the development orientation of the paper industry.