The market for July, while a mixed bag among the grades, has continued to improve overall, primarily due to increases in MIX Paper and Newspaper. The increase in paper pricing is a continuation of the trend of the past three months where paper pricing is responding to mill demand after the disruption of National Sword 2017. It boils down to my basic premise of the past many months- The underlying demand for paper products, especially packaging products remains robust because the world economies continue to grow steadily.

Looking to the future, we feel that the normal seasonal factor of the end of the harvest season will assert itself on the market, especially for Cardboard, sometime soon. It is likely the end of the landscaping season (irrigation products) will have the same downward impact on many of the plastic grades. These factors combined lead us to expect the normal leveling of pricing followed by some modest declines over the next few months.