Different from the perception of many people that the Paper industry is gradually shrinking, in fact, the Paper Industry in general and in Vietnam is currently growing strongly, creating jobs for tens of thousands of workers, and develop other economic sectors (planting, logging plantation forests and supporting many industries ...

"Silently" Support to many manufacturing industries
Paper is not a key industry of the economy, but it is essential products and paper industry play a key role, significantly contributing to the economic development of Vietnam, silently accompanying and supporting many manufacturing industries (packaging, used in product packaging) ).

Paper industry offers many products for various purposes: social and cultural activities, education, production, research activities ... Vietnam's average paper consumption is still very low, only reaching 50.7kg / person / year compared to the world average consumption of 70kg / person / year, Thailand 76 kg / person / year, USA and EU 200 - 250 kg / person / year.

The strong growth of digital media has led to a decline in the demand for newsprint, but there has been a strong growth in the segment of packaging paper, paper boxes - ancillary products for electric commerce. electronics, online trading, product packaging ...

Recent surveys show that packaging paper and tissue are tending to grow strongly, newspapers are in deep decline, and printing paper is down slightly; pulp accounts for more than 40%, recycled paper accounts for nearly 60%.

Moreover, in recent years, the high growth of Vietnam's export activities has been leading to a sharp increase in the demand for paper for packaging, especially for industries with a high proportion of export such as textiles and leather. shoes, seafood, components, electronics ...

Not to mention in recent years with the movement to protect the environment, environmentally friendly products from paper are tending to take the throne, promising significant development potential for the industry, especially the paper packaging industry. Food packaging, replacing disposable plastic products ...

According to the Vietnam Pulp and Paper Association (VPPA), the paper industry has grown strongly with an average growth of 11% (2000-2007 period) and 16% (2007-2017 period), in which paper Packaging has a strong growth rate (expected in the next 5-10 years is 14-18% / year.

Currently, Vietnam paper industry has more than 300 enterprises, of which about 20 enterprises with production scale of 100 thousand tons / year, the rest are small and medium; many large-capacity investment projects are operating (capacity of each project is about 400,000 - 500,000 tons / year); Many businesses are planning to invest in projects with a capacity of over 1,000,000 tons of packaging paper / year.

Paper industry contributes about 1.5% of GDP and exports reach over 1 billion USD.

In fact, in order to ensure the production meets the requirements, most domestic paper enterprises apply advanced technology, strictly comply with the requirements of environmental protection, showing the trend of sustainable development. of Paper industry.

Potential but not small challenges
The paper industry is potential, but the domestic paper-making business is facing many challenges that are hard to take chances and take full advantage.

One of the typical challenges, the Paper Industry Planning has expired, there is no industry development strategy, while the related documents are not clear and specific, the basis for investors is still lacking, so the projects are inadequate. Investment projects in the paper industry Vietnam are currently implementing do not have grounds and legal grounds.

In fact, investment projects are still taking place and are very large scale, not managed by the state management agencies, resulting in an imbalance in product structure and capacity scale for the whole industry ...

In addition, although recovered paper (also known as recycled paper), also known as recycled paper, is an important input of the Paper Industry, contributing to environmental protection and saving natural resources. Take advantage of recovered paper to produce, help businesses reduce costs, due to low scrap prices, reduce environmental treatment costs ...

In Vietnam, due to the lack of a uniform policy, recovered paper is not enough to meet domestic production needs, most businesses have to import large quantities to serve production. Experts point out that the demand for recovered paper in Vietnam, used to produce paper, increases about 35% / year, it is expected that by 2025, the demand will use up to 13.2 million tons (in 2018, using 3, 7 million tons).

Japan is the world leader in paper collection and recycling, with paper collection rate reaching over 80%.

The management of imported recovered paper faced many challenges ... causing difficulties for production and business activities of many businesses (especially packaging paper manufacturing enterprises).

In the orientation of investing in the development of Vietnam's Paper Industry, many experts recommend that the sector should focus on common products with great demands such as pulp, packaging paper, tissue paper; prioritize

Source: Ministry of Trade