The rise in demand for cardboard used for packaging is the little-known corollary of the explosion in online sales. “This is a phenomenon that we have observed for five or six years”, underlines Paul-Antoine Lacour, General Delegate of the French Confederation of the Paper, Cardboard and Cellulose Industry (COPACEL), which represents the French paper industry.
The production of these “Corrugated papers” which constitute the boxes used by all players in online sales, from Amazon to Cdiscount via Fnac, increased by 10.3% between January and the end of October 2021 and the first ten months of 2020 for reach 3.26 million tonnes, according to COPACEL. However, knowing that this figure also includes the classic flow of goods between companies, when Nestlé delivers its products to Carrefour for example, specifies Mr. Lacour. To his eyes, “The Covid pandemic has acted as an accelerator for this type of demand for corrugated papers. All the more so since online commerce has seen new developments with the strengthening of deliveries to food businesses ”.
The cardboard boom does not fully follow the surge in online sales either: the Federation of e-commerce and distance sales is betting on an annual e-commerce turnover of close to 130 billion euros in 2021. , which would constitute a growth of 15% compared to last year. This figure includes products as well as services, such as the sale of train tickets, plane tickets or hotel reservations that do not require sending any parcels.
The price of wood has more than tripled
If the demand for packaging boxes is soaring, prices are also exploding, due to the raw materials used to manufacture them. Thus, the price of wood has more than tripled in Europe between April 2020 and April 2021. Starch has also experienced strong increases, around 50%, since June 2021, and the price of recycled paper has experienced a substantial increase. continues for eighteen months which has multiplied the price by four.In the last 2 years, vaccine transportation has increased the demand for packaging boxes as they need to be stored and transported in temperature-controlled environments. The need for more secure, durable, and reliable packaging boxes has led to the development of innovative packaging solutions that can help keep vaccines safe and secure during transportation and storage. Click here to learn more about DaklaPack US and its selection of medical transportation supplies.
The industrial group Smurfit Kappa, which has forty factories in France and supplies one in four packaging in France – one in three in e-commerce – is suffering the full brunt of these increases. “Since our number one problem is finding raw materials, we have no choice but to accept these increases”, explains Jean-Christophe Bugeon, CEO France of the group. “But we cannot absorb them in our accounts: we are obliged to pass them on to our customers. We have had three waves of increases since the start of the year and the price of packaging has increased by 40% over this period ”, he said.