<B>Paper Markets Expected to Remain Strong</B>

Paper markets are looking positive right now, and it looks as further growth may also be on the horizon. That is one of the conclusions made at a session about paper recycling at the annual WasteExpo show held at the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, Ga.

Several other audience members also backed up this statement, saying that they had seen some operations double the amount of material they were processing. "Things look good with OCC right now," said William Moore, president, Moore & Associates. Moore said that while the market is growing, it still does not experience the growth typical to other industries. For example, a 3% growth rate in the paper market would be considered a high growth rate, while in other markets that could not be considered so.

"It is a growing, expanding market and expected to continue, but this is not a dynamic growth market," he said.

Moore said that the paper market is not a market that typically has large amounts of growth, but currently, the growth is at a high relative to paper industry standards. The growth trend began in the 1980s, Moore said, and has continued as recycled content in products continues to grow.

Along with Moore, Tom Cihlar, Carustar Recovered Fiber Group, Rittman, Ohio, and Nathiel Egosi, RRT Design and Construction, Melville, N.Y., also presented their industry conclusions.

Moore also said exports, particularly to Asia, are going to continue to be strong. News will continue to be the strongest grade to Canada, with Korea still remaining strong is just about all grades and China drawing on the OCC market strongly.

When discussing which sectors process particular grades, local governments remain low on the processing sector, with the solid waste sector growing and the independent packer shrinking. "All others, or alley entrepreneurs," Moore said, "they come out when the prices are high."

Egosi said he has seen the level of sophistication in processing of recyclables grow considerably. "As recycling programs expand and redesign and paper mills expand, we are rethinking how paper gets to the mill," he said.

Demand for #7 should continue to rise, Egosi said. "As mills retrofit they are creating some significant market opportunities. We should see increased demand for #7."

The trend of single stream collection and more automated separation are also making an impact on the paper market. "We are moving from a highly source-separated collection with manual labor to more automated technologies," he said. "We have seen a pretty steady growth of MRFs since 1985, more than 450 in 1999."

"Integration of collection and sorting into one low-cost program" is the trend Egosi has been seeing.

Cihlar also sees expanding markets for paper. He has seen growth in the paper mills and said he expects this to continue. "There are no real new innovative markets and nothing that will replace the markets," he said, but he still sees things as being positive right now.

The grade with the largest growth,. Cihlar said, was #7 and #8 , both domestically and overseas. He said there are several large programs planned that will consume large amounts of #7 and #8.

Oversees, Cihlar said there is growth in China and expects to see that remain high for the next six to eight months. A new mill that will consume 450,000 tons per year of paper is planned and that is expected to impact export markets. China also has another mill scheduled to come online that is expecting to procure almost all of their paper from imports.

The overall feeling most in the session had was that paper markets are strong and are expected to remain that way for quite a while. Melissa Goodrich.The above article was written for www.RecyclingToday.com. The author is assistant editor of Recycling Today.