In an interview with the economic reporter of IRNA on Thursday, highlighting paper supply as the most important problem of their field of activities, Ali Gholi Hassani Azami added, “With respect to the increase in paper price due to the rise in exchange rate, the carton price experienced a 2-4 folded increase over the past year and a half.”

He said, “It caused the packaging industries to use plastic packages instead of cartons, which has healthy risk and environmental problems.”

This guild authority said, “The quality of the domestically produced paper as one of the most important raw materials of carton industries is now improved compared the previous years, but we need high quality pulp for cartons used in exports.”

Hassan Azami continued, “The major part of this pulp was imported from Brazil, Skandinavian countries and Russia in previous years, but the companies have turned to import from Russia using foreign currencies at NIMA exchange rate due to the sanctions in the past one or two years.”

He noted, “The NIMA exchange rate has caused the pulp price to increase from 4000Tomans a kilo in last year to 16 thousand Tomans a kilo, and the paper rose from 1500 Tomans a kilo to 6 thousand Tomans.”

The managing director of the Iran Association of Managers of the Carton and Corrugated Sheet Industry also noted. “There is no shortage pf paper as the main raw material of carton industries.”

He pointed out, “50 thousand people are directly and indirectly working in 167 large carton manufacturing units and 4 thousand converting units.”

According to the reports prepared by the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade, 223,300 tons of paper was produced in the first quarter of this year showing a 1.8 % dro‌p compared to the production of different types of paper produced in the same period of last year which was 237,700 tons.”

During this period, carton production increased by 55.7 % compare the similar period of last year and reached 189,100 tons.