<B>Deinking Grades Holding Their Own</B>

While most paper stock grades are sliding sharply many of the deinking grades seem to be holding up fairly well. Movement, always a key during down markets, remains steady to strong. Sorted white ledger, office grades and a number of other deinked grades continue to see decent domestic demands.

Sorted white ledger is benefiting from a fairly stable tissue market. Several processors note that while offshore orders may be difficult at the present time, movement to some domestic sources, as well as Mexico, remain upbeat.

Supply has been enough that there is very little in the way of any backlog of material at packing plants.

Another key to the good environment for many deinking grades is the lack of significant downtime at mills that are large consumers of the grades. While the OCC market continues to be afflicted by substantial downtime taken by a host of mills throughout the country, there doesn’t appear to be enough downtime being taken by tissue mills to throw more deinking grades back on the market.

Another positive is a shift by one board mill to shift its production to a white mottled linerboard. This shift is resulting in greater demand for some deinking grades.

There should be an increase in overall shipments to Mexico of the grade as a new machine is coming on line that will require additional amounts of various deinking grades. At the same time some domestic mills are matching these prices. This is keeping the price of many of these grades at a steady level.