Setting sail: exporting recovered paper to mills in China is the backbone of America Chung Nam's business - America Chung Nam Inc

Recycling Today, June, 2002 by Brian Taylor

In a presentation at the 2001 Paper Recycling Conference & Trade Show, Wade Schuetzeberg of the ACN office in Rotterdam noted the emerging importance of the European scrap paper market in supplying facilities such as the Nine Dragons mill.

"Led by low freight costs and subsidized bulk-grade fibers, European Union market share began to grow increasingly in places such as India, Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan," Schuetzeberg said, referring to conditions after the governments of Germany and other nations began getting more heavily involved in scrap paper collection.

The scrap paper broker noted that for a company the size of ACN, "building lasting supplier relationships is integral to the vision that the mill has. Its suppliers' health is the mill's own health--these two are inseparable as the mill is predicated on recovered paper as the primary raw material."

While many of those relationships will remain with American companies, the Europeans are not likely to be left behind. "The predominant source of supply for Nine Dragons has long been, and should continue to be, from North America," said Schuetzeberg. "To a growing extent, however, the mill has taken care to establish new sources of supply throughout the global marketplace, [and] European supplies of recovered paper are making their way into a meaningful share of supply."

The author is editor of Recycling Today and can be contacted via e-mail at btaylor@RecyclingToday.com.