A brief introduction of the Chinese graphic paper end-use market - commercial printing sector: The commercial printing sector, which includes catalogs, directories, inserts, direct mails and other types of promotional and sales materials, began growing as a graphic paper end-use market in China just in the past decade. After fairly slow development in the first five years (2001-2005), its growth rate almost doubled to 4.2%, driven by the solid improvement in China's real estate market and car sales resulting from the country's healthy economic development. Nevertheless, it is still only about half size of the European market and just over one-third of the size of the North American market. The total commercial printing market in 2011 reached about 4.2 million tonnes, an 800,000 tonne gain from 3.4 million tonnes in 2006.
Although the commercial printing sector uses all types of graphic paper grades, from standard newsprint to triple-coated woodfree paper, the dominant grade in 2011 was coated woodfree, with a market share of 52% or 2.2 million tonnes, followed by uncoated woodfree at 35% or 1.5 million tonnes of paper. Mechanical printing & writing grades have a share of around 11% in total, or a total volume of around 500,000 tonnes. This is quite small compared to shares in the European market (38% or 3.1 million tonnes) and the North American market (53% or 5.7 million tonnes). A very small portion (less than 2%) of newsprint is used in this end-use sector.
(RISI)
