About 20% of the world's total forest land cover is present in Russia only, which ensures the continuous supply of forest fiber to the paper industry. Some of the growth drivers for the paper industry in Russia are rising GDP, increasing industrial output, high export, government fund infusions, high disposable income, and urbanization.
Russia's Ilim Group, which has a joint venture with International Paper (Memphis, Tenn., USA) is a market leader in terms of paper production in Russia. The players present in the Russian paper market are set to increase their production capacity in coming years to take full advantage of available abundant raw materials in Russia.
According to the new report, revenues generated by the paper industry in Russia are expected to grow at a healthy rate, much higher than in the previous three years, reaching $6.4 billion by 2017. The share of the northern region of Russia in the total production of paper and paperboard was more than 25% in 2011, which was the highest of all regions. This is mainly due to the fact that the northern region is heavily forested, offering huge wood fiber volumes to the paper industry.
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