Company watch: Smurfit Kappa deftly dodges trap of surging wood pulp prices

The packaging giant has thrived, reporting a 10 per cent year-on-year increase in profits

Smurfit Kappa: the price of wood pulp has doubled, but the firm has managed to pass on inflation costs to its end customers

It’s not something we think about too often as consumers, but the price of paper has been subject to some of the steepest inflation since Covid-19 hit the global economy in early 2020.

Extremely tight supplies, coupled with soaring demand for cardboard boxes and packaging due to the surge in online shopping, has sent the price of wood pulp, the key material used by paper mills, soaring by as much as 100 per cent to ...