The shape of what’s to come: Paper & Board trends in 2025

These are dynamic times in the paper & board industry. Despite the many market challenges being faced, manufacturers who can stand out with sustainable and cost-effective solutions will come to the fore.

With this in mind, we caught up with the Category Manager for Paper & Board EU, Anna Olshanskaya, to discuss the trends to look out for in 2025, and why the combination of Cargill’s industrial starch solutions and technical expertise will help you win.

It’s time to follow the star for starch in 2025!

How is the paper & board marketplace evolving? 

In general, the paper & board market is not currently in the best of shape. However, paper and board have been broadly going in different directions.

In the graphic paper space, we have all witnessed a steady decline in the overall industry in the last 15 years, with the main driver being the digitalization trend. As a result, for the last 12 years, average CAGR has been -5.6%,* with graphic paper production in Europe down from 80mn MT to 45mn MT.**

At the same time, container and corrugated board sector had a very different dynamic – growing at 3.5% CAGR until 2022.*** Especially sharp growth was enjoyed during the Covid period. This was driven by the rise of e-commerce of course, but also the pandemic buying mode, where people were trying to enjoy themselves through pleasure purchases and renovations. So of course, when you order something you also need the packaging to go along with it.

So what can we expect going forward? 

Since 2022, the dynamic in both paper & board changed a lot, and not in a positive way. External factors such as the energy crisis had a huge impact on the European paper industry, as paper production requires a huge amount of energy; particularly at the drying stage. This resulted in a lot of extra costs for paper & packaging producers. Since 2022, public data shows there has been a stable drop in paper, board and tissue production in Europe; from 7.5mn MT per month at the end of 2021 to 6.1mn MT in 2023. Now the market seems to be recovering somewhat, but total production was still hovering at around 6.3mn MT per month during 2024.*

On the whole, European paper became less competitive compared to the other regions – due to the high energy, raw material and production costs. There are signs of improvement, but we will need to see how the market develops in the coming months.

What has been the role of the sustainability trend in solutions for paper & board?

In general, paper seems to be one of the materials with the highest recyclability rate. For example, in 2020, in Europe the peak recyclability rate of 81.5% was reached for Paper & Board, followed by Metal & Glass of around 75% and plastic of 37.6%****. For this reason, in European packaging, much of the trend still remains around plastics replacement, with 1% growth coming each year through the replacement of plastic with paper.***** Especially in Western Europe, a lot of secondary packaging is being replaced with paper – so that remains a big driver.

With sustainability being one of the biggest innovation drivers in the industry , fossil-free paper/packaging remains a huge trend, particularly among the larger paper/packaging producers; of whom many have clear sustainability targets in place. As an innovative starch supplier, there is an opportunity to replace some chemical-based ingredients (e.g. latex) with modified starches.

But I must add that despite the continued importance of the sustainability trend, a lot of the focus still seems to be around cost efficiency – especially in today’s high cost environment.

So where do you see opportunities for Cargill’s starch portfolio amid these market dynamics?

When we look on the production side, machines are becoming bigger and faster, and that is bringing a competitive advantage to the producer. This is the case in corrugated board; the faster your machine is able to run, the better productivity you are likely to have. But getting there requires high-quality glue, made with high-quality starch.

With this in mind, we’ve been working on some modified starches in our portfolio (C☆iGum™) which can help to increase running speed and decrease the losses typically seen as a result of splashes during production and without deteriorating the gluing strength. Additionally, comes the advantage of using wheat-based products, which improves drying efficiency and thereby customers can either save energy or increase production speed. You are also able to play with your formulation to reduce the use of high cost additives with this type of starch.

What about food packaging?

We have also worked on barrier coatings, which you can use in most types of food packaging. Here you need a coating to provide an oxygen, water vapor, and grease barrier. Traditionally, these necessary coatings have been based on chemicals. A biobased barrier coating for food packaging is very desirable here for both safety, biodegradability and recyclability appeal.

We are currently rolling out some solutions for our customers using different systems, depending on the applications. From a functionality perspective, these solutions are 1:1 replacements for chemicals (e.g. fluoro-based chemicals) and offer full protection. They deliver comparable result, at a cost competitive price.

Recycling is another big trend right now in the reuse of pulp. What are you doing here?

Indeed. Fresh pulp is an expensive material.. The more you recycle the pulp, the shorter its fibers become. As a result, the strength of the paper decreases and can lead to quality issues of the final product. In order to increase the strength, you need a wet-strength additive. Here cationic starch is used as a product for this purpose. So we also have an innovation in this area, which is a high cationic starch (C☆iBond™) based on wheat which can compete with high cationic potato starch –the traditional benchmark for this application.

Where do you see the biggest potential for starch applications in packaging?

Corrugated board in general is where the growth will likely continue to be. This type of packaging is used for many secondary packaging applications, in fruit and vegetable harvesting, for example or in e-commerce deliveries. Corrugating seems to be one of the fastest growing parts of the paper & board industry, so that’s where the focus is.

Another growing area is folding box board as well as SBS. We see few larger players investing in this area and Cargill can also offer some innovative solutions for this application e.g. in coating formulations in graphical board we may offer some modified starches to replace latex without compromise on printing performance.

Cargill markets itself as “the star for starch.” But how are we actually bringing value for paper & board manufacturers?

From a pure product point of view, starch is hardly the most innovative product in the world – but the knowhow to maximize what is done with it is what sets us apart.

Cargill has a really unique level of experience in terms of our technical support and innovation teams. Their focus is really on customer-driven innovation, where we are addressing these trends that we have discussed around sustainability and efficiency. We are really structuring our innovation approach around our connection to the market and our understanding of the unmet market needs of our customers.

It’s also about applying that technical knowhow.

Indeed. Native starch is a commodity ingredient that has been used in paper production for more than 80 years, so there’s not much room for innovation there. But if we speak about modified starches, this is where you can deliver real additional performance parameters. Again, you can use starches in order to be able to increase the speed of your corrugation machine, so that you can have a better quality box at the end. Doing so is hardly a plug & play exercise – it really requires a lot of formulation knowhow, understanding of machine settings, and finding the right components of the other ingredients, to be able to find the settings. So this is where our technical service team offers the asset we need to help our customers achieve these properties, and achieve this performance.

In the case of barrier coatings, the need for technical support is even more pronounced. Considering the many application areas, technical knowhow plays an essential role for success, whereby you can look at parameters such as cooking temperature and viscosity. This is where you can really see the final result..

Can you say a little more about how the development work is conducted?

We have an application and development center for Paper and Board in Krefeld (Germany), where the R&D team is based together with application laboratory team. They have a deep knowledge, not only on development of new molecules, but how it will be used during paper production.

*CEPI, 2024  //  **RISI, 2024  //  ***Fefco, 2024  //  ****European Paper Recycling Council (EPRC), 2022  //  *****Smithers, 2024