Australia is importing more pre-converted corrugated boxes than ever before, and paying increasing amounts to do so.
A new report released by IndustryEdge has revealed Australian imports of pre-converted corrugated boxes have grown at an average rate of 10.6 per cent per annum.
From an annual total of 10.0kt imported in the year ending June 2005, the volume of imports into Australia has grown at an average rate of 10.6 per cent per annum, reaching a record-high annual total of 30.3kt in the year ending June 2015.
The volume of imports increased by 15 per cent in 2014-15, with DQ’14 imports reaching a quarterly high of 8.0kt.
Rapid growth has occurred despite the depreciation of the Australian dollar, and the subsequent increase in import prices. In SQ’15, import prices hit a high of AUDFob2,156/t, and the overall price trend has been upwards for the past five years.
In JQ’15, the trade weighted average price remained above the AUD2,000/t mark at AUDFob2,066/t.
Chinese imports have dominated the market for more than a decade, in both volume and market share, according to IndustryEdge. A decade ago, Chinese annual imports totalled 4.3kt, representing 43 per cent of the market. Over the course of the next decade, imports of pre-converted corrugated boxes from China grew an average of 15.4 per cent per annum. In 2014-15, annual imports from China were 20.9kt, making up 69 per cent of total imports. China/Hong Kong has been the source of 82 per cent of the increase in total imports in the last decade.
Other countries exporting to Australia are Indonesia and Malaysia, and, while their share of the market is diminishing year by year, both countries continue to supply similar volumes to those imported a decade prior. In the most recently concluded year, Indonesia and Malaysia supplied 2.2 kt and 1.6 kt to Australia, representing 7.2 per cent and 5.2 per cent of the market respectively.
The majority of pre-converted corrugated box imports are being consumed in New South Wales and Victoria. The two states combined utilised an average 62 per cent of the imports in the four years depicted in the chart below.
Imports into NSW have grown at a rate of 3.8 per cent per quarter over the last four years, totaling 2.2kt in JQ’15. Victoria imported 2.4kt of pre-converted corrugated boxes in the same quarter, experiencing 3.4 per cent quarterly average growth over the last four years.
Other states have also experienced growing demand for pre-converted corrugated boxes, with Queensland’s imports growing 4.1 per cent per quarter over the last four years, West Australian imports growing 3.2 per cent per quarter, and South Australia imports growing 4.3 per cent per quarter. Total imports in JQ’15 were 86 per cent higher than the total four years earlier.
