Entering the fourth quarter of 2026, the spot market for waste paper in Europe showed a more resilient and upward trend compared to the first half of the year. Among them, the rebound of low-grade packaging waste paper was particularly eye-catching.
European export indicators show that the export landed price of old corrugated containers (OCC) has substantially recovered by about 20% to 25% from the low level in early spring, and mixed waste paper has also been rising step by step; among the high-grade waste paper, sorted office paper (SOP) maintains a tight balance, while some high-quality pulp substitutes show strong price resilience driven by the recovery of virgin pulp.
However, when the curtain of the macro industrial fundamentals is pulled back, this wave led by waste paper, "the autumn rally", is not a signal of a strong endogenous recovery for the local paper and paperboard manufacturing industry in Europe. It is more like a "supply-driven firmness" caused by the passive contraction of recycling volume due to the sluggish local industrial output, combined with the reorganization of supply sources across the Atlantic and the huge appetite in Asia.
The true causes behind the false prosperity: Domestic papermaking industry not out of the rut, supply shortage forces replenishment
The firm trend of spot prices for waste paper in Europe contrasts sharply with the sluggish production rate of the local paper and paperboard industry.
From macro output data, after a decline of approximately 1.6% in production in 2025, various production indicators of the European paper and paperboard industry in the first half of 2026 were still in a contraction range. Especially the cultural paper sector represented by news paper, coated and uncoated writing and printing paper, was deeply affected by the continuous erosion of digital media and was in a structural retreat; only industrial packaging paperboard showed some resilience against decline.
Without a sudden surge in the terminal downstream terminal's operating rate, the underlying driving force behind the strengthening of European waste paper mainly comes from three structural variables:
The passive contraction of the overall recycling base. Due to the reduction in the circulation of printed materials, weak macro retail consumption, and the reduction in manufacturing cardboard boxes, the absolute amount of waste paper recycled in major cities and recycling sites in Europe has continued to be suppressed, resulting in a natural tightness at the supply source;
Seasonal replenishment by local paper mills in the fourth quarter. With the arrival of the traditional pre-Christmas inventory replenishment period, even though the terminal profits are meager, the giants in European boxboard paper still need to lock in safe raw material inventories as per tradition, triggering a stage-specific demand for aggressive purchasing;
The traction of cross-ocean export demand. The key increment that pushed up the price of European OCC by more than 20% is not on the Rhine River, but in the overseas paper production centers east of the Suez Canal.
Asian buyers' cross-ocean fiber rush: India firmly takes the lead, and multiple points of Southeast Asia blossom
On the global recycled fiber map, the thirst of the Asian paper industry for imported wood fibers is becoming the strongest support for European waste paper.
As India experiences a concentrated consumption wave during its traditional festivals and its domestic waste paper recycling faces a阶段性 bottleneck, Indian paper enterprises have purchased a record amount of high-strength and durable OCC from overseas, continuing to solidify its absolute dominance as the core digestion center for European and international waste paper fibers.
At the same time, the activity of manufacturing bases in Southeast Asia has also seen a significant recovery.
The inquiry intentions of scale packaging paper enterprises in Malaysia and Indonesia continue to rise, hedging against the insufficient quality of local fibers. Vietnam, as a global export processing and electronic product packaging hub, its rapidly expanded paper and paper box production capacity has formed a long-term rigid reliance on high-grade packaging waste paper.
This strong cross-ocean buying force directly provides European exporters with high bargaining power, continuously siphoning European local recycled materials to the East.
North America diversion and shipping benefits： The exquisite resonance of the global trade chain
The popularity of European waste paper in the Asian market is also attributed to the chain reaction in the North American market and the special benefits of the Eurasian shipping network.
On the one hand, North American waste paper is largely intercepted by local demand. Recently, the domestic cardboard production in North America has shown a stronger absorption of waste paper fibers, which led to a significant reduction in the available spot quotas of US waste paper that could be exported to Asia. Coupled with the continuously high prices of US waste paper on the international market, this directly forced Asian and Indian buyers to shift a large number of regular orders to European waste paper, which is relatively more abundant in supply and offers more cost-effective quotations.
On the other hand, the "return shipping capacity" of the Eurasian sea route has formed a safety cushion for freight costs. Although geopolitical conflicts and the Cape of Good Hope detour have significantly prolonged the sailing cycle of the Eurasian route, in the macroscopic framework of east-west container trade, there is still an extremely sufficient capacity tilt for empty containers and return routes from Europe to Asia.
In recent months, the partial improvement in some main sea routes and the matching of transportation capacity have objectively lowered the overall landed logistics costs of European waste paper to Asian ports, greatly enhancing the operational competitiveness of European OCC in Asian ports.
The stabilization of raw material pulp reflects the differentiation of high-grade waste paper, with high-quality de-inking fibers becoming increasingly scarce.
Between low-grade packaging waste paper and high-grade de-inking paper, the industry chain presents completely different transmission logic.
Recently, the raw material pulp market, which had experienced a sharp decline in the previous period, has shown a phased bottoming out and stabilization. The spot quotations of broadleaf pulp have gradually recovered and rebounded from the early lows, and coniferous pulp has maintained a stable consolidation. This trend has had a differentiated transmission effect on the waste paper market.
OCC and mixed waste paper have gone out on independent markets. As they directly benchmark corrugated paper and boxboard paper manufacturing, their pricing logic is mainly driven by packaging orders, total recycling volume, and export arbitrage, and have a relatively less sensitive correlation with raw material pulp;
High-grade waste paper and pulp form a strong linkage. Sorting office paper, white carbonless cut edges, and high-end pulp substitutes, as they directly serve as cost-saving substitutes for commodity wood pulp in the formula, their prices are closely anchored to the trend of raw material pulp, and show a stronger and more resilient firm tone after the pulp price stabilizes.
The deeper warning to be noted is that the permanent decline in the demand for office and publishing printing paper in Europe and globally is cutting off the supply lifeline of high-quality recycled fibers. When office printing volume shrinks sharply and high-quality picture books and publications have a reduced issuance volume, the supply pool of high-purity white waste paper is drying up at a visible rate.
This means that any small purchasing pulse from specialty paper or household paper in the future may trigger extremely intense supply-demand imbalance and price spikes in the high-grade waste paper sector.
2026 Year-end Outlook: Six Key Radar Observations for Decisive Market Performance
As of the end of 2026, although the European waste paper market has completed a strong pulse-like recovery from a low base, this pattern supported by "supply shortage + cross-ocean demand" is fragile and full of uncertainties.
In the coming months, the global packaging and printing industry chain should closely monitor the interaction and evolution of the following six core indicators:
The contraction slope of the actual recycling volume of the entire European society, whether it will accelerate narrowing due to the further deterioration of winter cold weather and macro consumption; whether the actual operating rate of domestic boxboard paper machines in Europe can effectively resist the erosion of micro profits and maintain the current raw material purchasing rhythm.
Whether the import replenishment capacity of India and Southeast Asian markets after the Diwali holiday will experience a seasonal decline followed by a temporary procurement gap; the inventory strategy of North American packaging paper enterprises, and whether the US waste paper export quotas to Asia will be re-escalated.
The persistence of the spot price support for raw material pulp in the global market, and its threshold for supporting European high-grade de-inking waste paper; the subtle fluctuations in return shipping capacity and freight rates on the Red Sea and Eurasian main trunk routes, because for bulk trade of low-value waste paper, a few hundred dollars of container freight fluctuations can completely reverse the trade flow between Europe and Asia.
The overlapping and intersection of these six variables on the timeline will ultimately determine whether the European paper industry, as it bids farewell to 2026, will continue to be trapped in the "high costs, low profits" raw material tight balance predicament, or will usher in a new round of mean reversion through the rebalancing of cross-border trade flows.
