印刷业利润下降13.7%造纸却增长27.6%利润修复为何没有同步传导？

Profit recovery has not passed through in sync, but do not immediately attribute it to a margin squeeze from paper mills: statistical classifications, pricing lags, order mix and working-capital use can put different segments of the same value chain on different rhythms.

January–July 2026 | Industrial Enterprises Above Designated Size Nationwide

−13.7% Profit in Printing and Reproduction of Recorded Media ·+27.6% Profit in Papermaking and Paper Products

SECTION 01 · START WITH CALIBRATION

Profit Growth Is Not the Same as Profit Margin

Using total profit divided by operating revenue as a simple estimate, the January–July 2026 profit margin was approximately 2.83% for papermaking and paper products and 4.06% for printing. Printing profit fell 13.7% year on year, yet its current margin remained about 1.23 percentage points higher.

The shift is in the trend: the estimated profit margin for papermaking rose from approximately 2.58% in the first half of 2025 to 2.84% in the first half of 2026; printing fell from approximately 4.86% to 4.03%. One improved by about 0.26 percentage points while the other contracted by roughly 0.82 percentage points.

Research sources:National Bureau of Statistics of China: Industrial Enterprise Profits, January–July; first-half 2026 data; first-half 2025 data

SECTION 02 · CLASSIFICATION AND PRICING

Industry Indices Cannot Directly Replace Company Quotations

C22 covers both pulp and papermaking as well as the manufacture of paper and paperboard containers; C23 includes the printing of books and periodicals, stationery, packaging and decoration, and other printing. Corrugated-container manufacturing and packaging printing are not in the same statistical division, so +27.6% and −13.7% do not form a neat upstream-downstream profit allocation table.

In July 2026, the PPI for papermaking and paper products rose 0.9% month on month and 1.2% year on year; the printing sector fell 0.3% month on month and 3.0% year on year. Prices at the papermaking end showed marginal improvement, while printing remained under pressure.

Important boundary:PPI is not the transaction price of white paperboard, greyboard, containerboard or corrugating medium, still less the selling price of a particular customer's packaging SKU. Companies must compare like-for-like paper grades, basis weights, regions and contract periods.

Research sources:National Bureau of Statistics of China: July PPI; Industrial Classification for National Economic Activities

SECTION 03 · COMPANY EXAMPLES

One Company Can Have Multiple Pass-Through Curves

Zijiang Enterprise |Internal company data show that in the first half of 2026, the purchase price of white paperboard fell 8.2% year on year, greyboard rose 8.4%, and the unit selling price of color-printed paper packaging fell 11.4%. The figures are unaudited and represent company-specific data only. Lower white-paperboard costs did not automatically translate into an equivalent margin gain because color-printing prices fell faster, while greyboard moved in the opposite direction.

Jingxing Paper |The company reported a gross margin of 9.50% for industrial packaging paper, up year on year, while the gross margin for corrugated cases and board fell to 5.10%. Operating cash flow moved from a net outflow of RMB 491.4 million to a net inflow of RMB 600.5 million, supported substantially by lower inventories and higher operating payables.

The two examples show that material costs, product selling prices, gross margins and cash can all move in different directions at the same time. Companies need to locate their own break in the pass-through chain, not label entire sectors as winners or losers.

Research sources:Zijiang Enterprise: Announcement of Key Operating Data; Jingxing Paper: Interim Report

SECTION 04 · OPERATING PATH

Profit Must Pass Through Five Gates from Cost to Cash

Base-paper costs first enter purchasing and then quotations. Once a quotation becomes an order, it must still pass through changeovers, waste, logistics and delivery. After revenue is recognized, value must pass through inventory, receivables and payment terms before returning as cash. Equipment utilization then determines how much qualified output absorbs the fixed-cost base.

The five cards below do not answer the questions for a company; they convert them into fields that can be recorded, calculated, monitored and acted upon.

SECTION 05 · FIVE OPERATING CHECK CARDS

Trace Profit Bottlenecks to Specific Actions

SECTION 06 · STRESS TEST

What Evidence Would Change the Current Assessment?

If printing-sector PPI turns positive, orders and operating rates improve, inventories and receivables decline, yet profit margins continue to contract, the explanation of a squeeze from base-paper and other input costs gains weight. Conversely, if material costs fall but selling prices fall faster, or orders carry gross margin but cash remains weak, the problem extends beyond the upstream sector.

ON PAPER · THE NUMBERS REVEAL THE CORE

When recovery is out of sync along the same value chain, the underlying issue is that price, orders, production and cash have not completed their pass-through within the same cycle.

One question worth discussing internally:Where is your toughest bottleneck today: costs that cannot be passed into quotations, orders that generate no contribution margin, inventory and receivables tying up cash, or insufficient equipment utilization?