Missed us at Shanghai Pulp Week 2026? The insights are still yours. 错过 2026 上海纸浆周？行业洞见依然与您共享。

Shanghai Pulp Week brought together Fastmarkets’ pulp editors and economists for another year of on-the-ground analysis in the third week of March, with the industry’s mood reflecting the scale of change underway.

Two pressures dominated every conversation: global overcapacity and weakening demand. Together, they are driving an accelerating wave of mill closures, mergers, and production halts across Europe and the Americas—shifts that delegates largely read as painful but necessary structural adjustments rather than an acute crisis.

China told the opposite story. Capacity expansion there continued at pace, reshaping global supply balances and putting pressure on producers elsewhere to rethink their positioning.

Raw material supply emerged as a quieter but significant concern—tightening availability is already producing quality issues downstream, with longer-term implications for the industry’s development.

In his keynote on March 18, Global Pulp Capacity Closure Risks: Navigating Trigger Points and Regional Vulnerabilities, Fastmarkets Senior Economist Patrick Cavanagh tied these threads together, mapping the effects of consolidation, capacity shifts, and evolving end markets on pulp demand through 2026 and beyond.

The following day, the focus turned to downstream markets. At the Tissue Paper Forum on March 19, Fastmarkets Economist Jennifer Liu delivered a guest keynote, Global Tissue Outlook, examining how Asia now drives demand growth while Europe and North America face stagnation. With China the largest consumer and Latin America expanding steadily, shifting supply chains and new regulations are reshaping the industry landscape through 2029.

Fill in the form to download the presentation slides, from Patrick Cavanagh and Jennifer Liu, and also access to our official global pulp outlook.