Welcome: The Price of Insight

The Recycling Today Media Group recently hosted our 2012 Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show. One of the sessions that led to many questions and comments from attendees was “The Changing Face of Industry Pricing Indexes,” in which speakers Peter Stewart of Forest2Market, Charlotte, N.C., and Todd Petracek of RISI, Boston, provided insight into the methodologies behind their pricing services.

RISI recently acquired Official Board Markets and has integrated that publication’s pricing and news into PPI Pulp & Paper Week (PPW). PPW says it plans to leverage the addition of OBM’s content to improve the accuracy of recovered paper price reporting and to expand its coverage of the paperboard market.

For Paper Recycling Conference attendees looking for additional information on these indexes, and for those who were unable to attend the event, we’ve brought the pricing discussion from the conference to the pages of our 2012 Paper Recycling Supplement. On p. S10, readers can find an overview of the methodology behind Forest2Market’s Market2Mill pricing as written by Suzanne Hearn, vice president of sales and marketing for the company. And on p. S16, readers can learn more about how RISI plans to improve OBM and PPW price assessments. That article is written by Todd Petracek, vice president of news and prices at RISI.

For more Paper Recycling Conference coverage, visit www.RecyclingToday.com. There, you can view numerous interviews from the event, including those with Petracek and Stewart, as well as those with Sean Duffy of Charlotte-based ReCommunity and Joel Litman of Dallas-based Texas Recycling/Surplus Inc. and current PSI president. These videos, and others, can be accessed at www.RecyclingToday.com/Content.aspx.

The Recycling Today staff soon will begin planning for the 2013 Paper Recycling Conference. Please email me at dtoto@gie.net or Senior Editor Dan Sandoval at dsandoval@gie.net with suggestions for topics you’d like to see addressed at the 2013 event. If one thing remains constant, it’s that the paper recycling and manufacturing industries are in flux. We want to be certain our programming addresses the issues that concern you.