too many paper merchants in europe

From what I have found there are around a dozen merchants in Europe and there are two main institutes / bodies. PaperlinX has 45% of UK market.

From website articles it is just too hard to determine if end paper prices have increased or decreased and similarly what the merchants buy-in prices or margins are. At institute level they all comment on the need for greater margins, but when push comes to shovel price cutting would continue.

Certainly the German buyers seem to control prices via playing one merchant off against another.

Definitely August was a terrible month in terms of both paper volume and lower prices.

At some point some paper merchants will fall into bankruptcy. One small one went this month in Slovakia.

With a very fast shrinking paper market, others will have to go, before some sort of profitable industry equilibrium is found. So having the lowest cost structure, best logistics etc is obviously critical.

China is building enormous cardboard manufacturing businesses with one to come on stream this November. The size is immense. Surely it will only service the Chinese market. So it should have no affect on Europe or UK. This Chinese semi communist style of govt certainly (at this point of the evolution) has a lot of efficiencies over free-market govt styles.

The US giant paper mills / merchants continue to flourish.

Lets hope for a few key merchants to go out of business, as long as