Comparison of Ontario’s roundwood and recycled fibre pulp and paper mills’ performance using data Envelopment analysis

Abstract

The pulp and paper industry converts roundwood and recycled fibre, collected from wastepaper into printing and writing papers, and other specialty grades of paper. The pulp and paper mills in Ontario have been facing extreme competitive pressures, which have affected their performance leading to several mill closures. The purpose of this study is to evaluate and compare the relative performance of three types of Ontario's pulp and paper mills (using all fibre, only roundwood fibre, and only recycled fibre). This study uses bootstrap data envelopment analysis in analyzing and comparing the operational efficiency of the Ontario's pulp and paper mills, with 224 sample data observations over a period of 17 years. The results indicate low levels of overall technical and managerial efficiencies in the pulp and paper mills using recycled fibre. The results of the study highlight that the pulp and paper industry needs to divert their attention to streamlining the manufacturing processes, reducing costs, improving raw material usage, and making capital investments in the new and improved technology, in order to improve the operational efficiency and competitiveness of the Ontario's pulp and paper mills. The pulp and paper mills using recycled fibre require huge capital investments, especially for installing the latest de-inking technology. The results of this study provide policy makers with detailed performance analysis so that future input resources can be reallocated to improve the performance of the pulp and paper mills in Ontario.