Mathieu Wener, Economist with Numera Analytics, presented Pulp and Paper Products Council and Numera’s latest data and forecasts on global tissue demand, wood-free paper, and boxboard markets, with a closing focus on China’s growing role as an exporter of finished paper and board products. His presentation painted a picture of a global industry in which aggregate growth continues but is increasingly uneven — slowing in mature markets, shifting in China from domestic consumption to export-driven production, and facing a demographic headwind in North America that will cap the upside for years to come.
Mathieu Wener
Global tissue demand grew 1.3% in the first two months of 2026 — the weakest pace since the post-COVID destocking period of 2021, and a slowdown from both last year’s pace and the decade-long trend. The weakness is concentrated in mature markets, where demand has essentially stalled. Western Europe is flat, and North America has turned negative. The North American decline follows three years of strong growth, including an inventory-building cycle in 2025 driven partly by fears of US tariff actions that pulled forward purchasing. The negative results in early 2026 reflect a normalization against that inflated comparison period rather than a steep weakening of underlying consumption — a reading supported by import data, which spiked to record highs in the first half of 2025 and have since declined significantly.
The weakness in North America, however, is not solely an inventory phenomenon. Consumer spending on goods has slowed to a crawl in the first quarter of 2026, with essentially all spending growth concentrated in services. The US labour market has added only 250,000 jobs over the past 12 months — an exceptionally weak 0.2% increase against a typical annual pace of 0.8% to 1.0%. Job growth is heavily concentrated in healthcare and away-from-home services, while government employment is declining under the effect of federal spending reductions and the technology sector — previously one of the largest sources of employment growth — is contracting at nearly a 2% pace. Against that backdrop, demand is unlikely to end 2026 in positive territory.
Looking further out, Numera’s five-year forecast for North American tissue projects average annual growth of just under 1% to 2030 — below the long-term trend pace of approximately 1.5%. The primary constraint is demographic. Population growth in North America surged above 1% in both 2023 and 2024 — Canada alone saw its population rise by nearly 5 million people over a recent span as visa policies were significantly relaxed, and the United States saw a large inflow of undocumented migrants. Since then, immigration policy has tightened sharply in both countries, and by Numera’s estimates, population growth in North America was negative last year. While it should return to modest positive growth over the outlook period, the pace will be roughly half of what was seen before the pandemic — a demographic shift that caps tissue demand upside in the region for years to come.
On China, domestic tissue demand growth has slowed dramatically — from a 6% annual pace before the pandemic to nearly flat in the first two months of 2026. Demographics play a role, with China’s population now peaking and beginning to decline. The more significant factor, however, is the housing market downturn. Since the Evergrande crisis in 2021, housing construction in China is down 75% and housing prices are down 25% — a significant hit to consumer confidence given that Chinese households hold the vast majority of their wealth in property rather than financial assets, reducing willingness to spend on household products including tissue.
Chinese domestic producers have responded to slowing home demand by ramping up exports aggressively. Since 2022, Chinese tissue exports have more than doubled, growing at a 30% pace in the first two months of 2026 alone — keeping production rising at over 4.5% despite a flat domestic market. Exports are rising to all destinations with the exception of North America, where tariff barriers apply, with particularly strong growth into Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Wener flagged that not all of that growth represents true consumption — a significant share is likely flowing into inventories, attracted by competitive Chinese pricing. The global tissue market is still expected to add 4.5 million tonnes over the next five years at an average growth pace of 2.1%, but a growing share of incremental tissue capacity is owned or affiliated with pulp producers — meaning it could potentially be supplied from integrated rather than market pulp sources, tempering the translation of tissue volume growth into market pulp demand. One development worth watching on that front is Suzano’s pending acquisition of a majority stake in Kimberly-Clark’s assets outside North America, expected to close in the second half of 2026, which would represent a substantial addition to pulp-producer-affiliated tissue capacity globally.
On wood-free paper — uncoated and coated printing and writing grades — the picture is one of continued structural decline. The market has lost 15 million tonnes over the past decade, and Numera projects a further loss of approximately 5.5 million tonnes by 2030 at an average decline rate of 2% per year. Coated grades, which represent 25% of the wood-free market, will account for nearly half of that decline as magazine and similar end uses fall at a double-digit pace.
Boxboard — folding boxboard and coated ivory board — has been the strongest performing segment, growing at just over 4% annually over the past five years, supported by exposure to food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. Numera projects the pace to slow over the next five years, primarily because of China’s domestic slowdown. Chinese ivory board capacity has grown by 10 million tonnes over the past five years to 22 million tonnes — enough to supply 80% of the global market — and a further 6 million tonnes of capacity additions are expected by 2030, producing intensely competitive export pricing at decade-low levels despite global inflationary pressures.
Across tissue, boxboard, and printing and writing grades, a common thread in Wener’s presentation was the scale of Chinese overcapacity in finished paper and board products. Surplus capacity — the gap between production and total installed capacity — has tripled over the past decade, from approximately 6 million tonnes to 23 million tonnes. Much of the export growth is not a coordinated national strategy, he said, but the result of domestic producers handing surplus tonnes to traders who find foreign buyers — a dynamic reflecting economic priorities that place employment and global competitiveness ahead of return on equity in ways that differ from how producers elsewhere make capacity decisions. How long that is sustainable, he left as an open question for the audience.
In the Q&A, Kelly McNamara asked whether the North American tissue decline is consistent across consumer and away-from-home segments. Wener said the weakness in underlying consumption is likely modest rather than severe — true demand may be closer to flat than genuinely negative — and that to the extent declines exist, they are probably concentrated in away-from-home, where spending on restaurants and recreational venues has softened as lower-income consumers pull back on discretionary outings. Healthcare, he noted, is the fastest-growing away-from-home segment in the US, expanding at a very fast pace. Household tissue spending, meanwhile, remains slightly positive, if weaker than usual. On the sustainability of Chinese export growth, Wener said the answer depends on whether surplus capacity reflects lack of demand or lack of competitiveness, and on economic priorities that in China place employment and market share ahead of return on equity — considerations that allow capacity to keep running well past the point at which producers elsewhere would consider closure.
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