Innovation is the key for the development of the specialty paper market

At the 2015 China specialty Paper Industry Development and Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction Summit Forum held not long ago in Quzhou City, Zhejiang province, entrepreneurs and experts in the paper industry discussed the future development of specialty paper industry. Cao Chunyu, President of the China Pulp and Paper Making Research Institute, believed that in the innovation process, attention should be paid to internal and external resource management. Only by better integrating the external innovation resources can we gain market opportunities and stay ahead in the industry.

In 2015, against the background of China's slowing macroeconomic growth, the demand in the paper industry, which was closely related to the economic trend, remained weak. At the same time, the over-concentration of production capacity in the paper industry in the past few years and the impact of electronic media on the printing industry had caused periodical saturation and excess to the current production capacity, and the competition in the industry was extremely intense.

According to the data released by the national bureau of statistics, the output of domestic machine-made paper and paperboard increased by 2.8% year-on-year in 2014. From January to June 2015, the cumulative output data was negative from march to may year-on-year. By the end of June, the cumulative production capacity of machine-made paper and paperboard had increased by only 0.25 percent year-on-year, and the demand in the paper industry was still sluggish.

Compared with regular paper, the market of specialty paper was not impacted by electronic media, but in the general environment of the paper industry, enterprises of specialty paper could also feel the pain of the industry downturn.

"In the last two years, with the exception of highly monopolized or featured products, the rest of the products were left in the competition, and most of them would be stuck into vicious competition. Enterprises are facing increasing inventories and falling prices, and such situation is likely to last for quite long time”. Said Ji Hao, chairman of Zhejiang Kane Specialty Material Co., LTD.

In the view of Ji Hao, cost for labor and environmental protection has increased significantly in recent years, and it is difficult for enterprises to survive without core competitiveness, while innovation is the exactly the core competitiveness.

How to grasp the future innovation of specialty paper industry? Cao Chunyu believes that market demand is the key to guiding innovation. The future development of specialty paper depends on the application and breakthrough of new technology and new materials. When facing the demand of new industries, whether it is industrial demand or commodity consumption demand, it is easier to grasp the opportunity and achieve success by application of new materials and new technologies. In the past, the innovation of enterprises was divided into original innovation and imitative innovation. Some small enterprises often chose the latter due to the lack of research and development funds. In such way, they can occupy a certain market in the short term, but cannot maintain the leading position in the industry for a long time. In order to be a century-old shop, they must focus on innovation and make personalized and special products.

Cao also reminded entrepreneurs to focus on internal and external resource management in the innovation process. The internal innovation resources of enterprises are limited. Only by combining production, study and research, cooperating with universities and research institutions, and even combining innovative resources of industries such as chemical and new materials, can enterprises have better market opportunities and stay ahead in the industry.

As for the future trend of the specialty paper industry, Zhao Wei, secretary general of the China paper association, believes that specialty paper, to a large extent, can be used as a kind of material to develop many new purposes. The state supports and encourages the development of functional materials. From the perspective of functionality, the specialty paper industry has a broad prospect.

Source: China Green Times

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