Business Report For The Year 2010

The year 2010 brought about significant changes for the European paper industry once again. After the financial crisis of recent years, the current economic upswing has created favourable sales opportunities for the paper industry. Parallel to growing demand, the prices of main raw materials also increased considerably. Soaring waste paper prices were coupled with rapidly climbing energy costs. Based on the increase of costs and demand, the European paper industry raised its prices significantly during 2010. The price of brown containerboard — the paper type used in the largest quantity — went up from 300 EUR/tonne at the beginning of the year to 450 EUR/tonne at the end. A similar price increase of over 50% occurred for all other paper types used by Dunapack. Rocketing paper prices led to a considerable increase in costs for corrugated production, as paper consumption accounts for more than a half of production costs. The primary task of 2010 was to compensate the profit-dampening impact of rising costs by increasing product prices. Because of increasingly strong competition, higher product prices could only be achieved with a slight delay, and only in select areas. Due to the above, base activities showed decreasing profitability during the first half of the year.  Nevertheless the second half of the year turned out to be very successful, especially in respect of the sales quantity. So overall, the planned business result was reached and even exceeded.

The profit before tax was dampened by several one-off impacts. The notes to the financial statements explain these impacts in detail.