Box shipment trends their worst since depths of Great Financial Crisis

Freightwaves | April 24, 2023

FreightWaves wrote at the beginning of April about continued severe weakness in U.S. box demand based on its survey of over 30 boxmakers, and the Q1 results from the third-largest North American containerboard producer, Packaging Corp. of America, confirmed as much.

Packaging Corp.’s shipments were down nearly 13%, a decline as severe as during the depths of the Great Financial Crisis. (Its shipments were down a virtually identical percentage in the first quarter of 2009.) Furthermore, Packaging Corp.’s demand trends weakened as Q1 progressed, reflecting increasingly weaker consumer spending.

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