The Growth in Tissue Industry
Tissue industry and market have been growing over the years. Production and consumption are predicted to continue to grow due to urbanisation, increasing disposable incomes, consumer spending, and population growth.
From 2005 to 2015 the global consumption of tissue grew at an average rate of 3.4% in addition to that market volume increased by close to 10 million tonnes. The growth trend was abruptly broken in 2009 because of the Great Recession and as a result of that, the consumption rate grew by only 1.2%.
Despite this downfall global tissue market experienced growth rates between 3.1% and 3.9% since 2010. The major growth has been in the emerging markets, accounting for 80% of global growth. China, as it accounts for 40% of growth, and Latin America has seen the largest growth.
European Tissue Markets
The Western European tissue market has recorded rather disappointing growth rates in recent years, except the 2.7% growth in 2015. In 2016, the growth rate was 0.8%, and it rose up to 1.3% in 2017. In the same year, Southern Europe accounted for 79% of the Western European volume growth. Among all the European countries, Italy showed the most positive performance after several years of stagnant tissue consumption.
In Central Eastern Europe, the tissue business continued to develop positively, particularly in the Czech Republic and Hungary. Now, European tissue market approximately turns over 10 billion Euros every year and grows at a rate of around 2%, while representing 25% of the global market.
In the MENA region, which consists of Middle Eastern and North African countries such as Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, shows significant growth. Total tissue consumption in the MENA region has been steadily growing; from 1.615 million tonnes in 2016 to 1.742 million tonnes in 2017, marking a 7.86% increase in a single year.
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt, as the four largest consumers of the region, account for 66% of the total regional consumption. At about 8.5%, tissue expenditures in MENA have shown satisfactory average growth rates about 950,000 tonnes over the 10-year period between 2006 and 2016.
Turkey Markets
Recent investments in Turkey have impacted the dynamic tissue sector regionally; leading to a transformation from a typically small net import market into net export in less than a decade. The production capacity in Turkey was 760.000 tons in 2015 but with the help of a series of newly established plants, it was expected to reach 940.000 tons high by the end of 2018.
At the same time, the tissue consumption is growing each year at a 12% rate (the worldwide average figure is approximately 3.4%) and it nearly reached the peak of 600.000 tons in 2017. Some developments about the exportation also took place in Turkey.
These investments led Turkey to export predominantly jumbo rolls instead of converted products. Turkey has very rapidly reinforced its position as an important tissue supplier on a global scale. It exported about 60,000 tonnes of tissue jumbo rolls and converted products in 2006, but by 2017 the export volume had grown to 374,000 tonnes, because of many recent export-oriented investments in the country. The business has been growing over the years.
