Sweden-based Ekman Group offers a wide range of services, covering the entire forest products supply chain and contributing valuable market intelligence to each stage of their business partners’ enterprises. They understand the industry and help their business partners maximize their efficiency in the challenging market through their 3 divisions: Pulp division, Paper and Packaging division and Recovered Materials division. In a recent interaction with Paper Mart magazine, Mr. Pankaj Chowdhary, Managing Director, Ekman Recycling Limited, United Kingdom talked about the Ekman Group, its market footprint, and also the global market scenario.
Paper Mart: Please tell us about the company, its product offerings, and its market presence.
Pankaj Chowdhary: Ekman Group is one of the largest traders of forest products in the world. Ekman Group caters to various segments of the paper industry with a pulp division, a paper division, and a recycling division. As a trading house, Ekman is, by its very nature, a flexible and responsive entity. We provide a complete range of services for the paper and pulp industries, covering market information, research, invoicing, documentation, logistics and warehouse administration, transportation and insurance, trade finance, credit risk coverage, payment administration, advance payments, financing, currency and interest rate hedging, and price risk hedging.
We are represented in over 100 countries, and our own sales offices in about 40 locations worldwide, in close cooperation with an international network of partners and representatives, ensure a strong presence throughout the world in all producing and consuming areas for the forest industry.
Ekman Recycling Limited, is part of our Recovered Materials Division. We sell recovered paper (waste paper) out of America, the UK, and Europe. We have been present in India for over 25 years and India has been a favorite market for us. Our prime markets are India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Pakistan through the way of deep sea containers. We have been very well invested in the Indian market. Our recovered materials division ships about 1.2 million MT of recovered paper and secondary rolls globally.
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PM: Please shed some light on the current global market scenario.
PC: The paper industry has a bright future, especially in emerging markets. The industry is projected to be driven by packaging, the print media will continue to shrink. This lower demand has sustained for the last 12- 15 months. The production capacity in Asia and Europe has gone up drastically but is not in proportion to consumption. That means the consumption in these regions has been the same but production has increased drastically. It is going to take a long time, approximately 4-5 years for the demand to catch up with the production capability. However, the packaging segment is a growing industry with many opportunities. As far as the waste paper is concerned, the collection has shrunk because of the low demand.
There is less material being exported out of America right now. The reason is that American prices are high and the internal demand in America is quite high. Europe due to the war has been facing recession which has created less demand and hence there has been less production. The European material has been exported to countries in Asia, especially India. So it’s a good time for Asia to be in this business and for Asian people to take advantage.
PM: How do you foresee the influence of legislation passed by the EU on the paper industry?
PC: Legislation regarding paper exports is in the pipeline in the European Union. The union has been considering two options: to keep their paper within the EU or allow them to export, post proper audits and certifications about the origin and source. However, this cannot happen overnight. Potentially, it will take at least 3 to 5 years to implement the ideas. They are planning to come up with legislation for waste paper which will allow a few countries to export waste paper into Asia. However, post-Brexit, the UK being outside the EU, is unlikely to be directly affected by these changes. The next three to five years could bring significant shifts in this landscape.
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PM: What strategy would you recommend to Indian paper mills?
PC: The availability of raw materials is not going to be easy in India. The Indian paper mills need to find their source of raw materials and develop a better collection system. They must make sure that their raw material pipeline is in good shape and that heavy investments are made for constant flow of raw-materials.
