In an exclusive interaction with Paper Mart, Mr. Madhukar Mishra, Managing Director, Star Paper Mills Limited, shares that Star Paper Mills, a virgin wood-based paper manufacturer, leverages its singular fiber sourcing strategy by focusing on social forestry and high yielding clonal abilities. It uses inventory as a tool for balancing cost, quality and availability.
Paper Mart: How would you describe the current fiber landscape in India, and what major shifts have you observed in recent years in terms of availability patterns, pricing dynamics, supply reliability, and the balance between domestic sourcing and import dependence across different fiber sources?
Madhukar Mishra: Fiber landscape in India has been of perpetual shortfalls, as evidenced by imports of wastepaper, wood pulp and wood chips. Rising volumes of imports of waste paper etc. point to an increasing trend of supply deficit. More than shortfall, there is a serious issue of cost competitiveness. Most other large paper producing countries allow captive plantations which enables planned harvesting & total control on costs.
PM: How has your fiber mix evolved over time across wood, agro, and recycled sources, and what have been the key drivers behind these changes: whether related to cost pressures, raw material availability, product quality requirements, or strategic repositioning of your portfolio?
MM: Star Paper Mills has been a virgin wood-based paper manufacturer and does not use any significant quantities of auxiliary fiber, be it agro or recycled fiber.
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PM: How do you approach fiber strategy within your organization, and to what extent is it influenced by product mix, grade requirements, and customer expectations, as opposed to market-driven constraints such as availability and price volatility?
MM: Strategy operates a bit differently in our case. Since we make only wood-based products, we tailor our products and cater to only those segments of the market that befit this kind of pulp. Given this situation, we get directly impacted by volatility in availability as well as prices of wood.
PM: How do you evaluate and balance trade-offs between cost efficiency, quality consistency, and supply security in fiber sourcing, especially during periods of volatility, and are there defined internal thresholds, benchmarks, or triggers that guide shifts in fiber sourcing or blending?
MM: Our manufacturing system, as well as products, are designed only with wood, and therefore there is no shift in fiber sourcing.
PM: How is your approach evolving in terms of securing greater control over fiber sources through plantations, long-term contracts, or structured sourcing ecosystems, and what proportion of your fiber sourcing would you consider to be under long-term control versus market-dependent procurement? Additionally, how do you balance the need for control with the flexibility to respond to changing market conditions?
MM: Historically, the Indian paper industry was dependent on government allocations of forests. As constraints began to appear in the availability and reliability of the source, Star Paper Mills in North India, and many other mills in South India, took to promoting social forestry.
Most mills currently do not depend on government allocations. However, in this model, there is no control over cost as well as supply volume.
Just to cite a case, many other industries have come up and grabbed supplies to the detriment of paper mills which originally facilitated wood cultivation.Long term contracts are not yet successful in the Indian market because growers have small land holdings and there is high volatility in prices. There is also no flexibility in responding to changing demand as trees take five years to mature. It is not an annual crop, so you cannot change availability from season to season.
For wood, we have a complete chain right from clonal multiplication and providing high-yielding clones to farmers, to a network of suppliers, agents, and own depots.
PM: How do variations in fiber sources or blends impact key operational parameters such as process efficiency, yield, machine runnability, chemical consumption, and final product quality, and how frequently or under what conditions are such adjustments typically made?
MM: The type of fiber used has implications on equipment used, plant design, process parameters and above all, the type of products that you can make. However, since Star Paper Mills is 100% wood-based, this is not an issue for us.
PM: What are the key operational and logistical challenges you encounter in ensuring consistency and reliability of fiber supply across sources such as wood, agro residues, and recycled paper, how is your sourcing network structured (for example, through plantations, aggregators, depots, or import channels), and how do factors like region, seasonality, and infrastructure influence your strategy?
MM: We do not use agro or recycled fiber. For wood, we have a complete chain right from clonal multiplication, providing high-yielding clones to farmers, to a network of suppliers, agents, and own depots.
PM: To what extent are process improvements or technological interventions enabling you to optimize fiber utilization or expand sourcing flexibility, and could you share specific examples, along with any measurable impact, where technology has helped mitigate fiber constraints or improve efficiency?
MM: In terms of technology, the successful clonal multiplication of poplar and eucalyptus has been a great boon. It has enabled large scale cultivation with less use of land and, at the same time, greatly enhanced farmer revenues. Mills are now trying to develop faster rotation trees which will make social forestry even more attractive to farmers and reduce response time.
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PM: What has been the most significant shift in your approach to fiber sourcing and management in recent years, and could you share a specific instance, particularly during a period of disruption, where you had to balance competing priorities such as cost, quality, and availability?
MM: Being a pure wood-based manufacturer, Star Paper Mills does not have too much flexibility. We do however try to use inventory as a tool for balancing cost, quality and availability. In terms of quality, unfortunately, it has been a down hill trend. The quality of wood used by industry has gradually declined over the last two decades.
PM: How do you see fiber strategy evolving for Indian paper mills over the next decade, particularly in terms of self-reliance, import dependence, and the potential move toward more flexible or fiber-agnostic operating models, and which fiber source do you believe has the most scalable future in India?
MM: For a country to have a competitive paper industry that caters to its growing requirements, we need captive plantations and increased paper recycling within the country.
