In 2018, the German cardboard box industry registered a mild upward swing. Production ­volume of 871,000 t represents growth of 1.6 % over the previous year. Production value i­ncreased during the same period by 0.4 % up to EUR 1.87 bn, confirming the renewed ­increase in the level of production and revenues already indicated in 2017.

By Dr. Bernhard Reichenbach

The margins remain under pressure”, said Andreas Helbig, the new spokesperson for the ­Executive Board of Directors of Germany’s cardboard box industry trade ­association “Fachverband Falt­schachtel-Industrie e. V.” (FFI), during the association’s annual press conference in Frankfurt/Germany. Pan-European pressure on the margins has
resulted in a mild decline of 1.2 % down to 2,144 EUR/t in the calculative production value of manufactured cardboard boxes.

The German cardboard box industry employs some 10,000 people and represents around one-fifth of all European production volume, roughly twice the volume of the cardboard box industries in Great Britain, France or Italy. The German industry profited in 2018 from the stable overall economic situation.

The industry is seeking to increasingly counter the growing European competition through innovative strength and leadership in efficiency with the aid of process optimization via digitization and automation. Mr Helbig said: “The Europeanization of bid tendering and production is irrevocable. German cardboard box companies must therefore continue positioning themselves well through further development and innovative strength”. Intensified communication of the ecological advantages of cardboard boxes and paperboard compared to other types of packaging is increasingly playing a more important role.

The FFI presented a position paper during the press conference called “The Recyclability of Cardboard Boxes”, emphasizing that the fibres used in manufacture are 100 % sourced from renewable, non-fossil raw materials (wood fibres, cellulose and recycled waste paper). These raw materials originate solely from sustainable, usually certified forestry operations.

For certain barrier requirements, the cardboard can be coated, laminated or extruded with a fossil or biogenic-based polymer. Due to their significantly reduced plastic use, these kinds of cardboard/plastic combinations are preferable to the accustomed hard-to-recycle multilayered plastic composites. Mr Helbig emphasized: “Cardboard boxes can be almost completely recycled, either with or without a polymer coating”. Recycling should always be preferred to composting, since otherwise valuable fibre material is lost and the CO2 contained in the fibres is emitted into the atmosphere.

The FFI is planning to activate for the first time a central online international “Folding Box Cardboard” database in German and English in the fourth quarter of 2019 where cardboard and cardboard box manufacturers can list their products with the corresponding technical data and certificates. Such a central database will reduce administration costs for cardboard manufacturers. It will also further benefit manufacturers since they will only need to upload updated docu-ments or technical data once to the central database, eliminating the need to send out hundreds of such updates to customers individually or to provide them directly to customers upon request.