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Producers are working on raising their prices for bleached eucalyptus kraft (BEK) pulp and northern bleached softwood kraft (NBSK) pulp in Europe, with many reports of higher prices confirmed on the hardwood side, but a lot less clarity on the softwood side, Fastmarkets heard in early February.
The negotiations concern January pricing, which in Europe is discussed around the turn of January and February and applied in February.
While the NBSK market was still oversupplied, the BEK market has seen some tightening with some Latin American producers steering more volume to China, while supply from Iberia has been reduced or delayed as a result of industrial action and adverse weather conditions.
“No one will dispute that we are structurally oversupplied as an industry, but that does not mean that momentarily, for a quarter or two, things cannot tighten up,” one BEK seller said.
Underlying pulp demand has not really improved, most contacts agreed, but some buyers were reported to have bought more after the year-end holidays and in anticipation of higher prices later.
Many contacts also linked the large increase announcements for gross pricing to the inflation of discounts for new annual contracts.
“If you [compare with] the December net price, then the January net price, considering this increase, is almost unchanged. A little bit of an increase but not much,” a seller said.
A buyer criticized that line of reasoning, saying: “Yes, of course, [the net price changes less], but then you can question the point of agreeing to those discounts.”
There were also reports on both the softwood and hardwood sides of some buyers making use of contract fall-back mechanisms to avoid the gross price increases.
BEK suppliers have been seeking increases of $120 per tonne for January pricing. Many contacts on both the buy and sell sides said that they were still in negotiations late last week, meaning that these discussions were taking longer than usual.
Some buyers were against taking on the full increase at once. Even so, many contacts described producers as standing firm behind the $1,250-per-tonne target, and multiple sellers confirmed closing deals at that price.
Fastmarkets’ price assessment for pulp, bleached hardwood kraft, eucalyptus, was $1,220-1,250 per tonne gross for January on Tuesday February 10, up by $120 per tonne from $1,100-1,130 per tonne for December. This was done to reflect the partially open state of business and the occasional report of lower price increases received last week.
“For us, if somebody’s not taking the $120 [per tonne increase], they will not have the pulp. We will sell it to somebody else,” one producer said.
“Probably we will accept [the price of $1,250 per tonne],” a buyer said, “but we will not do any job this month with this supplier. I think a lot of purchase guys will accept [the increase] but will reduce volume and go to net pricing or the spot market to avoid taking volume.”
Looking ahead, Suzano and Eldorado have separately said that they planned to raise February BEK prices by $30 per tonne in Europe. Both firms mentioned target reference prices of $1,280 per tonne.
“It’s inconsistent in terms of value, what they are announcing – from $120 to $30 [per tonne]. Is it only to support the $120 [increase] or will they really get something in February?” one buyer said.
Spot business was not considered very lively on the European BEK market in January, but deals were done at higher prices than in December, and with prices trending upward, especially later in the month.
On February 10, Fastmarkets assessed the price of pulp, bleached hardwood kraft, eucalyptus (BEK), spot, fca Europe, at $570-600 per tonne net in January, up by $30-40 per tonne from $540-560 per tonne in December. This was based on business transacted within this range. One deal was excluded as being below the normal range of business.
Influencing the price negotiations were events on the Iberian Peninsula. In Spain, Ence’s 685,000-tonnes-per-year Navia BEK mill suffered a week-long strike over proposed job cuts starting in late January. Portugal and Spain have also been hit by multiple storms in recent weeks, including Storms Ingrid and Kristin in late January and Storm Leonardo during the first week of February, tightly followed by Storm Marta. These have affected, among other things, ports and shipping.
Some buyers said that they were facing delays in deliveries due to either the strike or the storms, and some sellers said that they thought these events were helping them to raise prices.
Some buyers pointed out that stocks of woodpulp had risen by 8.6% month on month and by 4.4% year on year to 1.5 million tonnes in December, according to Europulp data. But some BEK suppliers said that Italian stocks had fallen considerably in January.
It has become quite normal for NBSK price negotiations to drag on in Europe, but the talks about December pricing to be applied in January took even longer than usual.
The last PIX Pulp NBSK index of the month settled at $1,549.46 per tonne on January 27, rising by a bit more than $50 per tonne from the start of the year. This indicated that suppliers ended up walking away with roughly half of the $100-per-tonne price increase they had hoped for in that month.
For January pricing to be applied in February, multiple contacts said that NBSK suppliers were mostly seeking prices of $1,650-1,660 per tonne. Many buyers were countering with lower bids, often around $1,600 per tonne.
By 13:00 CET on February 9, a few sources had confirmed settling business at $1,600 per tonne, but the majority of contacts said that negotiations were still open. To reflect concluded transactions, Fastmarkets’ price assessment for pulp, northern bleached softwood kraft was $1,600 per tonne gross for January on February 10, up by about $100 per tonne from $1,495-1,500 per tonne for December. The December assessment was made before price negotiations were concluded and did not reflect price increases registered on the market later in the month.
“Usually, January is confused,” a seller said, “but I think it’s the first time that we still have this confused situation also in February. But I think that in March we will start real negotiations.”
Contacts reported a significant amount of activity on the NBSK spot market in January, with pricing broadly unchanged from December.
Fastmarkets assessed pulp, northern bleached softwood kraft (NBSK), spot, dap Europe, at $730-745 per tonne net in January on February 10, up by $10-15 per tonne from the December level of $720-730 per tonne. This was based on business transacted on a euro basis more or less unchanged from December, but the exchange rate pushed the dollar level upward. One reported deal below the assessed level was excluded as being outside of the normal range of business.
The European NBSK market has been struggling with decreasing demand in 2025, in part because buyers were looking to BEK as a substitute. European consumption of bleached or semi-bleached softwood kraft pulp dropped by almost 10% year on year to 2.7 million tonnes last year, according to UTIPULP. For hardwood, the data showed a decline in consumption last year of a little less than 1%, down to 6.3 million tonnes.
While European NBSK producers took a noticeable amount of downtime in 2025, they have not made permanent capacity cuts.
“There is still overcapacity in softwood, and they are not able to curtail volumes in Finland, for example, nor in Sweden,” one buyer said, referring to the winter weather.
Some contacts noted that Finnish pulp producers were seeing an easing on the cost side because pulpwood prices were decreasing throughout the second half of last year, coming down by 28-32% since their peak in June last year. But they remained at a historically elevated level. Swedish pulpwood prices were also reported to have fallen during the latter part of 2025.
Market sources expected that Storms Johannes and Hannes, which hit Sweden and Finland in late December and felled some 13.5-14.0 million cubic meters of timber across the two countries, would add downward pressure to pulpwood prices as well.
European NBSK suppliers were not seeing any support from Chinese NBSK prices, which were flat in January. The PIX Pulp China NBSK Net index, which covers imported pulp, has hardly moved at all this year and was $690.39 per tonne on February 6.
The PIX Pulp China BHKP Net index, on the other hand, has risen by about $22 per tonne this year and was $585.05 per tonne on February 6. Multiple producers have announced plans to raise BEK prices further in February.
The outlook for the Asian pulp market changed dramatically when Indonesia revoked permits for 22 forestry firms, affecting roughly 1 million hectares of plantations, in late January, with more bullish sentiment linked to tightening supply.
Asia Pacific Resources International (APRIL), which relies on third-party wood suppliers affected by the license revocations, said it would cut its bleached hardwood kraft pulp output by 150,000 tonnes in the first quarter and increase woodchip imports from Vietnam. In contrast, APP Group said that neither its operations nor its suppliers have been affected by the license revocations.
BEK suppliers expected this to have knock-on effects in Europe because they thought that brisker business in China would contribute to a tighter market in Europe as well.
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