Testliner & Fluting (Recycled Containerboard, Semi-Chemical Fluting)

Recycled testliner, recycled fluting and semi-chemical fluting in reels for corrugated board

Testliner and fluting are the recycled and semi-chemical grades inside most corrugated boxes. Testliner is paper and paperboard made wholly or mainly from pulp of recovered paper, with a Mullen burst index of not less than 2 kPa·m²/g, and it may carry a surface ply of dyed, bleached or unbleached virgin pulp; the HS splits it at 150 g/m², with HS 4805.24 at or below and HS 4805.25 above. Fluting, the wavy middle layer, is bought as semi-chemical fluting under HS 4805.11, defined as paper in rolls with at least 65% unbleached hardwood fibre from a combined mechanical and chemical process and a CMT 30 crush resistance above 1.8 N per g/m², or as recycled fluting under HS 4805.19. The mill certificate reports grammage, moisture, burst, SCT to ISO 9895, RCT to ISO 12192, CMT for fluting and Cobb to ISO 535. UN Comtrade 2024 export declarations total USD 3.71 billion under HS 4805.24, led by Germany, France, the USA, Poland, Spain and Austria; USD 2.53 billion and about 4.6 million MT under HS 4805.25, led by Malaysia at USD 705 million and 1.57 million MT, the USA at USD 398 million and Canada at USD 382 million; USD 3.26 billion under HS 4805.19, where Indonesia declared USD 217 million and 642,000 MT and Austria USD 202 million and 470,000 MT; and USD 1.32 billion under HS 4805.11, led by the USA, Finland and Sweden. Türkiye declared USD 73 million and 164,000 MT of HS 4805.24 and Thailand USD 20 million. Those are declared export values, not offers.

The buyer is a corrugated box plant, a sheet feeder or a paper merchant, and the offer is a price per metric tonne for a stated grade, grammage, reel width and diameter. CBIL is a commodity brokerage company and brokers testliner and fluting from mills in Germany, Poland, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, the USA, Malaysia, Indonesia, Türkiye and Thailand, against the mill's certificate of quality per lot, packing lists with reel numbers and weights, a certificate of origin and FSC or PEFC chain-of-custody certificates where the buyer makes a recycled or certified claim. Paper and paperboard under chapter 48 are in scope of the EU Deforestation Regulation from 30 December 2026 for large and medium operators, so EU-bound lots carry due diligence statement references. Reels ship in 40-ft containers on FOB, CFR and CIF terms. European contracts often reference the Fastmarkets FOEX PIX Packaging Europe indices, which cover testliner 2 and 3 and recycled fluting, and North American contracts the Fastmarkets RISI medium assessments. Send the grade, grammage, reel size and core, tonnage and discharge port and the enquiry is screened and worked against it.

Excluded origins are not offered, including product re-exported, blended or re-processed through a third country. Every lot moves with a certificate of origin naming the producing plant, mine or grower country, and nothing is quoted before the seller and loading point are known.