The UK is running out of cardboard boxes! Orders are scheduled until June, so merchants are delaying shipments

It is reported that with the extension of the epidemic lockdown and the rapid development of e-commerce, the volume of online shopping in the UK remains high, which has led to a surge in merchants' demand for paper packaging boxes. However, the long-term lockdown has also restricted the production and supply of cartons in the UK, resulting in a situation of supply exceeding demand.

Cartons are in short supply, and merchants have postponed delivery time to one week

Since the whole world entered the e-commerce leap period in 2020, everything from potted plants to bicycles have been packaged in cartons by merchants and sent directly to consumers' homes. The raw materials for some packaging cartons in the UK need to be imported from Germany and the Netherlands. In the second half of 2020, the paper available for packaging inventory in Europe fell by 20%, and the entire market was in a state of supply exceeding demand.

Due to the urgent supply of cartons, many merchants said that they could no longer ship goods. Some merchants had to extend the delivery time from 2 days to one week to deal with this problem.

In addition, the recycling of cardboard boxes is also a problem. Few people will store cardboard boxes at home. On the one hand, consumers think that cardboard boxes take up a lot of space, and stacking cardboard boxes will make their homes look very messy. On the other hand, a large number of cardboard boxes piled together also poses a certain fire hazard. Therefore, most cardboard boxes can only be thrown away as garbage in the end. In this way, even the cardboard boxes that are intact after unpacking are difficult to be reused.

Orders are scheduled until June, and packaging companies may increase prices further

A carton company in Birmingham, UK, asked its staff to work overtime to process online packaging box orders, using three large trucks to receive and deliver cartons at least six times a day , but it still could not meet market demand.

The warehouse manager said that the warehouse was full at this time last year, but now two-thirds of the cartons have been sold. Many packaging cartons were ordered in December last year . Currently, the demand in the market is huge, while the supply is extremely limited, and the delivery of goods has been delayed by two months.

The managing director of Sadlers Carton Co., Ltd. in the UK said that the company's current orders have been scheduled until June, the price of packaging cartons has risen by 6%-7%, and based on the estimate of the demand for packaging cartons throughout 2021, the company is now considering a new round of price adjustments.

However, according to the British Paper Industry Federation, as European paper production capacity recovers in 2021 and countries lift lockdowns, carton supply is expected to reach a balance.

logistics

Cross-border e-commerce market

Carton shortage