Wrap-up of the International Pulp Week 2026 Convention

Kelly McCloskey, Editor
Tree Frog Forestry News
May 14, 2026
Category: Special Feature
Region: Canada, United States, International

International Pulp Week (IPW) brought together global market pulp leaders for two days of presentations, market intelligence, and industry dialogue hosted by the Pulp and Paper Products Council (PPPC). Tim Brown, vice president with PPPC opened and introduced the program before before handing the sessions to day one speaker and moderator Kevin Mason of ERA Forest Products Research, and day two moderator Kelly McNamara of Numera Analytics. Now in its 21st year, IPW remains the premier annual gathering for the market pulp sector — drawing producers, end-users, analysts, and suppliers from across the value chain for a concentrated look at the forces shaping global markets. This year’s program covered an unusually wide range of territory, from geopolitics and macroeconomics to fibre performance, specialty cellulose, bleaching chemicals, carbon capture, and a comprehensive market outlook. For those who missed Tree Frog’s coverage, here are all of our summarized stories.

Day One – April 9, 2026

Day Three – April 10, 2026

Key takeaways from Vancouver include:

The 2026 program confronted an unusually turbulent global backdrop — the closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the outbreak of conflict in Iran, escalating US trade policy uncertainty, and a global pulp market navigating the dual pressures of Latin American capacity expansion and China’s accelerating shift toward domestic self-sufficiency. Eleven speakers across two days addressed the forces reshaping the industry, from macroeconomics and fibre performance to specialty markets, chemical supply security, carbon capture, and a comprehensive market outlook.

The geopolitical and economic context

The Strait of Hormuz closure dominated the conference’s opening session and remained a reference point throughout the program. Kevin Mason of ERA Forest Products Research argued that the conflict is not an isolated event but an expression of a deeper structural break — the end of the post-1945 Pax Americana and its replacement with what commentators have called the Donroe Doctrine, a US retreat toward hemispheric consolidation. Mason argued that the structural forces behind the current instability — debt levels, wealth inequality, and what historian Peter Turchin has termed elite overproduction — were building regardless of who held power, and that their full economic effects have not yet materialized. The physical shortages and demand destruction that the Hormuz closure will eventually produce, he said, are still ahead.

He also flagged a less obvious consequence of the North American mill closure wave: the exceptional surplus of pine pulpwood now accumulating in the US South following closures by GP, IP, and other major producers, with prices at their lowest in decades on an inflation-adjusted basis. That surplus, he argued, represents a potential future fibre source for Chinese mills — a development that could reduce market pulp import demand over time if the commercial and logistical pieces align.

Joaquín Kritz Lara of Numera Analytics quantified the scale of the energy disruption. By his modelling, the current supply shortfall — running between 12 and 14% of global production — is the worst on record, worse than the OPEC embargo of 1973 in its speed of onset. Oil prices have risen only approximately 50% since late February, far below historical precedents, because speculative positioning has been constrained by the risk of sudden policy reversal — what traders have termed the NACHO trade, or “not a chance Hormuz opens.” His baseline points to prices in the mid-$80s range over the next 12 months, reflecting UAE surplus capacity and continued US shale growth offsetting the shortfall. On the broader economy, he stopped well short of a stagflation call — US energy self-sufficiency, improved fuel efficiency, and the AI-driven investment boom together provide meaningful cushion — but cautioned that a prolonged conflict driving oil toward $200 per barrel would require a fundamental reassessment.

The fibre landscape

The fibre sessions returned repeatedly to the central tension in the market: the ongoing displacement of softwood by hardwood across most grades, set against the argument that softwood retains irreplaceable functional properties where performance demands are highest.

Rodrigo Marchi of Suzano made the commercial case for eucalyptus as a performance fibre rather than purely a cost input, presenting data showing that furnish optimization around eucalyptus can deliver cost savings of close to $10 per tonne alongside measurable quality improvements across tissue, packaging, and printing and writing grades. He described the deintegration trend — mills separating historically integrated pulp and paper operations — as a structural growth avenue, with Suzano’s technical service teams embedded in customer operations to support the transition.

Ismo Nousiainen of Metsä Fibre countered that in through-air-dried, or TAD, tissue — the technology behind premium kitchen towels and bath tissue — softwood is a functional component providing structural properties that hardwood has not been able to match. Mill trial results showed Metsä NBSK matching leading market reference pulps even at reduced inclusion rates while improving energy efficiency. Aki Temmes of UPM broadened the argument to furnish strategy, presenting trial results showing that deliberate optimization across eucalyptus, Nordic softwood, and Nordic birch can deliver fibre cost reductions of approximately 8.5% in TAD towel applications while maintaining production performance — with the caution that buying on price alone, in a market defined by simultaneously tightening cost, quality, and supply security pressures, carries real downside risk.

China: customer and competitor

China’s dual role as the dominant force in global pulp demand and an increasingly capable domestic producer was a recurring theme. Li Meng of PPPC’s Beijing Office documented the scale of the domestic build-out: from 550,000 tonnes of domestic pulp capacity in 2005 to 14 million tonnes in 2025, with domestic production now roughly equal to imported market pulp volumes. The 15th five-year plan points to a further 24% increase in confirmed pulp capacity through 2028, though Li noted that some announced projects may be delayed or cancelled, and that China does not face the near-term wood chip shortage that some in the market assume.

Mathieu Wener of Numera Analytics traced the downstream consequences of China’s overcapacity in finished paper and board products. Chinese tissue exports have more than doubled since 2022, growing at a 30% pace in early 2026 despite a flat domestic market — driven by a housing market downturn that has suppressed consumer confidence, with housing construction down 75% and prices down 25% since the Evergrande crisis. Ivory board capacity has reached 22 million tonnes — enough to supply 80% of the global market — with a further 6 million tonnes of additions expected by 2030. Surplus capacity across all end-use segments has tripled over the past decade to 23 million tonnes, with much of the resulting export growth driven not by coordinated national strategy but by domestic producers handing surplus tonnes to traders finding foreign buyers.

Specialty markets and chemical supply

Christian Chavassieu of CelCo covered the dissolving wood pulp sector — a market that places pulp producers directly in the global textile supply chain. Viscose, widely marketed as rayon, and Lyocell, sold as Tencel, are both wood-derived fibres competing with cotton and polyester in apparel and home textiles — a connection that is not always visible to the consumer but is creating structural demand growth as cotton’s agricultural constraints and polyester’s sustainability challenges push textile producers toward wood-based alternatives. Within that market, a severe shortage of specialty softwood grades has driven the price spread between commodity viscose and specialty dissolving grades to nearly $1,000 per tonne. A live anti-dumping case at the US Department of Commerce — with a ruling expected May 19th and potential duties of up to 60% against Norwegian and Brazilian suppliers — was adding acute uncertainty for US buyers at the time of the conference.

Craig Murphy of Chemical Market Analytics by OPIS framed chemical supply security as an increasingly strategic concern. The Hormuz closure has disrupted caustic soda supply chains in Asia and is driving hydrogen peroxide price increases in Europe. The chemical risk he flagged as most significant for pulp producers is sulfur — essential to the kraft process and already under structural supply pressure before the conflict, with global supply effectively capped by refining capacity and demand rising from nickel production and agriculture simultaneously. For Canadian producers specifically, Murphy’s observation that Canada’s dominant position in North American sodium chlorate production — approximately 70% of continental supply — is under growing competitive pressure from Latin American chemical islands that produce their own bleaching chemicals using surplus mill electricity deserves close attention.

Carbon capture as a commercial opportunity

Jouni Martiskainen of Svante made the case that pulp mills are uniquely well positioned for carbon capture — the kraft process concentrates biogenic CO2 in the recovery boiler stack to approximately 15%, far above ambient levels, making mills among the most efficient natural carbon concentrators in the industrial landscape. Capturing and permanently storing that CO2 converts a carbon-neutral process into a carbon-negative one, opening access to the voluntary carbon dioxide removal market, which transacted over 25 million tonnes in 2025. Financial incentive structures in Canada — investment tax credits of up to 62% of capital — the US 45Q tax credit at $85 per tonne over 12 years, and European mechanisms including Sweden’s reverse auction program provide a substantial commercial foundation. Svante has active projects at Mercer International’s Peace River mill in Alberta and an unnamed customer in the US South, with a full value chain project underway at a biomass plant in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan.

Market outlook

Emanuele Bona of PPPC closed the conference with a comprehensive market review and five-year outlook. Softwood demand contracted 6.3% in Q1 2026 against an exceptionally strong comparison period, with the picture improving sequentially as the price gap between softwood and hardwood imports in China narrows — falling from over $200 per tonne at the start of 2025 to well below $100 by April 2026. Hardwood demand is down 2.4% in Q1, with the correction concentrated in other Asia where 2025’s unsustainable 15% growth is being unwound. For the full year, PPPC forecasts softwood demand down approximately 1% and hardwood down approximately 2.3%, with both grades expected to rebound in 2027 before settling into a lower-growth equilibrium averaging just under 1% per year globally over the five-year period.

Several live variables will determine how those forecasts play out. The US Department of Commerce anti-dumping ruling on specialty dissolving pulp, expected May 19th, will reshape sourcing decisions for US buyers if duties land at the higher end of the range. Ceasefire negotiations on the Iran conflict — and whether the NACHO trade proves correct — will drive energy prices and downstream chemical costs through the remainder of the year. And 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, will be the single most watched development in tissue market integration. For an industry navigating a period of unusual complexity, the 2026 IPW program provided both a clear-eyed assessment of where markets stand today and a set of reference points for what to watch next.

Both days concluded with optional tours that extended the program beyond the conference room — a visit to Svante’s Burnaby facility for a firsthand look at carbon capture technology in action, and a guided tour of Stanley Park led by registered professional forester Bruce Blackwell, exploring forest health, insect impacts, and restoration efforts in one of Vancouver’s most iconic urban forests.

Drafted with the assistance of digital tools to streamline the process.

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