What does H2 2021 hold?
The past 18 months have been a wild ride.
Both tissue and packaging experienced shortages, then tissue has hit a soft spot after consumers started destocking their profligate hoarding of 2020.
Packaging of all kinds continues to break records.
Containerboard packaging announcements for box plants, mills and so forth continue to break records.
If you look at what has happened just in the Midwestern United States, the containerboard market is extraordinary.
Starting at Greater Chicago, Pratt built the mill at Valparaiso, Indiana, starting it up in 2016. They followed that with a mill at Wapakoneta, Ohio, for all intents and purposes on the eastern Indiana border, in 2019.
Then Saica of Spain announced a box plant in Hamilton, Ohio, nearly on the southeastern Indiana border last year. That was followed up by Kruger announcing a box plant in Eleizabethtown, Kentucky, less than an hour south of the southern Indiana border.
Then here comes Pratt again, announcing a new mill and box plant in Henderson, Kentucky, just across the Ohio River from Evansville, Indiana, the southwest corner of Indiana.
Last week Atlantic Packaging announced a box plant in Chicago.
Amazing. What does it all mean, other than these companies see the US Midwest as a great opportunity? I leave it to you to figure out.
What else will we see in the second half of 2021. I don't know, but it is going to be hard to top the first half.
