Waste paper, Italy increased exports by 45% in 2023

Over 2 million tonnes sold abroad: India first market, overtaken by Indonesia in the first 6 months of 2024. Data from Unirima's 2024 Report

30 October 2024

3' min read

Key points

To India and Indonesia
Recycling over 90%
Rise in quotations

3' min read

Waste paper: in 2023 Italian exports reached a value of 2.15 million tonnes (31% of production), an increase of 45.5% compared to 2022. A positive trend confirmed also in the first half of 2024, with about 1 million tonnes exported. The national production of waste paper last year reached 6.9 million tonnes (+5% compared to 2022), numbers that place Italy in second place in Europe, after Germany and ahead of Spain and France.

This is the picture that emerges from the 2024 Report of the Unione Nazionale Imprese Recupero e Riciclo Maceri (Unirima), an association that represents around 90% of the companies in the sector in terms of volumes managed with a total turnover of around 4 billion Euro.

To India and Indonesia

Specifically, most exports, about 79% of the total, went to South-East Asia and India. In 2023, the first trading partner was India, with a share of 43.4% of the total exported, corresponding to more than 934,174tonnes. This was followed by Indonesia (327,230 tonnes or 15.2%), Vietnam (166,720 tonnes or 7.8%), Austria (137,685 tonnes or 6.4%) and Germany (124,253 tonnes or 5.8%).

In the first half of 2024, Indonesia, with 19% of total imports, once again became the main destination for Italian maple paper exports, surpassing India (16%), which saw a 65% reduction in the quantities imported from Italy compared to the same period last year.

On the other hand, as far as the domestic market trend is concerned, consumption of waste paper decreased to 5 million tonnes used by Italian paper mills in 2023, down 7% compared to 2022 and thus returning to the pre-pandemic levels of 2019. Imports of waste paper by paper mills also fell, down 8.1% year-on-year (from 296 thousand to 272 thousand tonnes).

Recycling over 90%

The overall recycling rate of paper rose by more than 16 percentage points from 75.7% in 2022 to the record value of 92.1% in 2023, while the recycling rate of cellulose packaging stood at 92.3%, far exceeding the 85% target set by the EU for 2030. Thanks to these results, Italy also ranks second in Europe for the recycling rate of cellulose packaging, after Germany, and well above the European average of 79.3%.

The municipal separate collection of paper and cardboard waste in 2023 reached 3.75 million tonnes (+2.9% compared to the previous year), corresponding to a per capita collection of 63.6 kilograms. For this product fraction, which accounts for about 19.3% of the total collection, a further increase to about 3.82 million tonnes is estimated in 2024.

Rise in sales

After a sharp decline in the second half of 2022, waste paper raw material quotations started to rise again until the first six months of 2024, reaching EUR 90 per tonne for cardboard (+52% compared to the same period of the previous year). Since July 2024 the trend has reversed, with the value of the latest September quotations for the same type falling by 6.7 per cent compared to the previous month.

Over the past year, there has also been a general decline in the economic value of waste paper at international level. Slightly positive, according to Unirima, growth estimates to 2026 for the sector, but the unknowns of international crises and the constantly increasing weight of non-technological barriers loom large.