U.S. and World Paper Situations (2)

As can be seen from the table, the production of coated paper is occupied by the top 5 companies. The top 5 market share is 46%, the top 10 companies have a market share of 64.5%, and the tendency of centralization is increasing year by year. For example, the combined market share of the top 10 companies in 1995 was less than 50%, but it has reached 64.5% after four years. Moreover, the market share of the top five companies almost doubled compared with five years ago. In 1996, there were 11 companies with production capacity of more than 1 million tons, but at the time the output of the top companies was 2.6 million tons. By 2000, it was 2,000 tons. The number of top companies in the year has reached 5.1 million tons, while those with production capacity of over 1 million tons have been reduced to 10, which is due to mergers and acquisitions. Finland's Stora Enso merged with Consolidated Paper in the United States and became the world's largest coating paper company. In addition, the United States International Paper competed with UPM-Kymmene of Finland and merged with Champion International of the United States. UPM-Kymmene publicly announced that it had purchased shares of Haindle Paper in Germany.

The 9th-rank Lecta/CVC is a newly emerging company. It is a holding company of CVC. After absorbing Toraspapel in Spain, the company has entered the top three companies in coated paper (without wood pulp). Prior to this, Lecta has absorbed Condat in France and Garda in Italy.

As can be seen from Table 2, 3 of the top 5 companies are Finnish enterprises. Although there have been absorption and mergers, the three companies have occupied about 1/3 of the world's coated paper production capacity.

From the point of view of the production of coated paper, it can be divided into North America, Europe, Asia, the Pacific and others. In the past decade, production in North America has increased slightly, while Europe and Asia have seen greater growth. The demand for coated papers has dropped significantly in North America, but it has increased significantly in Europe. Although not a significant increase in Asia, it continues to increase. From the world perspective, demand is increasing.

According to different annual increments. In 1999, the world's coated paper stretched considerably. Compared with 1998, it increased by 5.8% and produced 37 million tons, which is an unprecedented record. This year's growth in the Asian region was a two-digit figure. Compared with 1998, it increased production by nearly 1 million tons. In the same year, Europe’s growth was 4.5%, setting a record of 17.4 million tons as the world’s largest coated paper production area.

Compared with the above, North America’s growth in 1999 was only 2.6%, which was relatively low. This is the result of a drop in demand as imports increase. The United States’ production growth was 2.5%, which was 8.6 million tons, but by 2000 it had fallen to 1.5%.

The world's coated paper (without groundwood pulp) produced 20.8 million tons of output in 1999, an 8.5% increase from the previous year. The larger regions were Asia and Europe, which grew by 10% and 9.8% respectively. This is due to the rebound of the Asian region after the 1997-98 financial crisis and the subsequent expansion of equipment.

The production of coated paper (mechanical) in the world in 1999 had a 0.8% elongation compared with the previous year, and there was only a slight elongation in any area. Due to the change in market demand, the relative decrease in coated papers (machines), the relative increase in the use of super-calendered papers for coated (non-coated) and non-coated papers. Although the amount of coated paper containing mechanically processed pulp has declined in Europe, it has increased appropriately in North America, and the elongation in Asia is larger because of the rebound in production in Japan. It can be said that the coated paper in mechanical pulp is produced in North America, Europe and Japan. There are already several programs in China that are supposed to increase the production capacity in Asia. However, it is still unclear how much of the planned fate-free coated paper is coated paper produced from the original mechanically processed pulp.

In the past ten years, the production of coated paper has increased significantly in major regions of the world, and the extent of its growth varies from place to place. In Asia and Europe, there is a surge in demand. Shipments are larger in Europe, followed by Asia. Production in the Asian region has exceeded production in North America. However, the signs of braking have already occurred in the elongation of major production areas.