Dissolving pulp refers to the pulp with the cellulose
content above 90%, including wood pulp, bamboo pulp and cotton pulp. The report
touches on the first two categories. In the world, the dissolving pulp capacity concentrates in
regions with abundant forest resources such as North America, South Africa and
Brazil. Between 2011 and 2012, China’s intensive release of dissolving pulp
capacity made it possible to become one of the major producing regions of
dissolving pulp all across the globe. Major dissolving pulp producers worldwide
include Aditya Birla, Sappi, Sateri, Rayonier, Buckeye, and Lenzing, the
combined capacity of which in 2012 accounted for 61.4% of the world’s total. In 2010, the dissolving pulp capacity of China import dependence rate surpassing 80%.
The considerable demand for dissolving pulp encouraged many companies to build
new dissolving pulp projects, leading to the substantial rise in capacity to
937,500 tons by 2012. However, due to the bleak demand in global textile market
as well as the international low-priced dissolving pulp, China-made dissolving
pulp products took a nosedive in price, forcing most industrial players to slash
their output and even suspend their production in order to reduce losses. In
2012, China’s dissolving pulp output was just about 335,000 tons, with the
operating rate down to 35.7%. There were only 9 companies in China in the production of
dissolving pulp in 2012. Most of them are medium- and large-sized papermaking
and chemical fiber enterprises. Among the papermaking companies, they were
Yueyang Forest & Paper, Sun Paper and Fujian Qingshan Paper Industry which
were specialized in the production of wood dissolving pulp.
