|
The
Indonesian pulp industry is set to rebound from the global economic
downturn as international orders have started to pile up with domestic
pulp producers.
Indonesian Pulp and Paper Association (APKI) chairman M. Mansyur said
foreign orders now amounted to more than 2.5 million tons of pulp this
year – more than half of the country’s annual production
capacity of 4.5 million tons.
With international pulp prices at around US$500 a ton, the total value of these foreign orders was roughly $1.25 billion.
“We welcome that so many foreign buyers want to order pulp from
domestic producers this year. But the pulp factories can not serve them
[all] because they are already flooded by orders. So sorry, we have to
tell them we’re out of stock,” Mansyur told The Jakarta
Post recently.
Mansyur said orders began being placed shortly after prices started
improving in August, when the world began recovering from the global
economic downturn. Pulp prices had nose-dived from $810 per ton in
July, 2008, to $360 a ton in March this year and then bounced back to
$500 a ton in August, he said.
“Business in the world is moving again. And Indonesia is popular
in the international community as a pulp and paper exporter,” he
said.
According to Mansyur, Indonesia comes ninth among global pulp producers and is also the world’s 11th paper producer.
He said the country recorded $4.5 billion in export revenue in 2008 and
$4.2 billion in 2007, for both pulp and paper exports combined.
Price drops, Mansyur said, had forced pulp producers to cut their
utilized capacity from 90 percent of 6 million tons a year in full
capacity before the global economic crisis down to 30 percent early
this year.
At that time, conditions in the paper industry were no better, he said.
But the industry has begun to recover, with pulp factories already returning to running on 90 percent of capacity.
“In the long-term, factories may now expand production capacity,
installing new machines [citing possible new peaks in orders in the
future],” said Mansyur.
But wood and wooden product exports slumped 28.3 percent to $1.07
billion in the first half of this year, from $1.49 billion in the first
half of 2008, according to data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS).
|
