Recycling Today reports that by the end of 2022, the phenomenon that has become known as the “cardboard box recession” had taken shape, and in early 2023, one analyst even observed “echoes of the Great Financial Crisis everywhere one looks.”
Officials at packaging companies around the world had hoped for an uptick in containerboard demand by the end of last year, especially as new mills began ramping up production, adding pressure to demand. But last spring, reports surfaced suggesting that uptick likely wouldn’t materialize until 2024.
Now, at this year’s halfway point, a veteran paper and packaging analyst says the U.S. box recession finally is nearing its end—which spells good news for the broader U.S. economy.
“Why should anyone care about the corrugated box market?” Bank of America Securities senior paper and packaging analyst George Staphos asks during a mid-June episode of Yahoo Finance’s “Market Domination.”
“Basically, 80 percent of the economy moves through corrugated boxes, and even though the economy is progressing, we’ve been going through a packaging recession, as you’ve been destocking for other reasons, really since the second half of 2022.”
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