• 01 Jun, 26
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Every week, the world sends us different signals. But paper remains.

On June 2nd, Italy celebrates Republic Day. It is not just a date on the calendar, but the day when the country, having just emerged from the war, was called upon to choose its form of government. April 25th commemorates Liberation Day. May 1st celebrates work. June 2nd, instead, celebrates the birth of republican Italy: the moment when a nation decided to look ahead and build its future on new foundations.

Just fourteen years after that referendum, Cartiere di Trevi was founded in 1960. It was born within a young, republican, industrial Italy that was rebuilding itself through work, factories, skills, businesses and confidence in progress. Those were the years in which Italian industry became one of the engines of the country’s growth, transforming territories, creating employment and shaping new production chains.

This is why, today, talking about paper, energy, artificial intelligence, packaging and the circular economy also means talking about continuity. Technologies change, markets change, global challenges change. But the same principle that accompanied the birth and growth of republican Italy remains central: creating value through work, industry, responsibility and the ability to look ahead.

Some changes come from international markets, others from energy, others from technological innovation, artificial intelligence, sustainability and the new digital tools entering companies. Sometimes they may seem far removed from the daily work of a buyer, a box manufacturer, a converter, or a company purchasing paper, board or packaging solutions.

Yet, if we look at them closely, they all tell us the same thing: today, choosing a material no longer means simply buying a product. It means choosing continuity, reliability, sustainability, efficiency and the ability to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

Let’s look at them one by one.

The evolution of packaging in e-commerce

In recent days, research by Mondi on e-commerce highlighted a very interesting point: even in an increasingly digital world, packaging continues to play a decisive role in the customer experience. The purchase may begin online, perhaps guided by algorithms, platforms, artificial intelligence and reviews. But then comes the physical moment: the package is delivered, opened, touched and evaluated.

That is when packaging stops being just a container and becomes part of the relationship between company and customer. Protecting the product properly, avoiding oversized packaging, using materials aligned with environmental expectations, offering an orderly and professional image: these may seem like details. In reality, they are elements that can strengthen trust, improve brand perception and reduce waste throughout the entire supply chain.

This is why, even when we talk about industrial paper and board, we are never talking only about grammages, formats or pallets. We are talking about what that material makes possible: producing better, shipping better, protecting better, communicating better.

Energy: the variable that weighs on the entire industry

There is another issue that continues to weigh heavily on the entire European manufacturing industry: energy. For those who work in paper, energy is not a secondary item. It is not a simple additional cost. It is one of the fundamental conditions for producing, planning, delivering and remaining competitive.

A paper mill operates with complex, continuous-cycle systems, where gas and electricity directly affect cost stability and production planning. For this reason, every movement in the energy markets does not concern only financial operators or large trading companies: it concretely affects the entire paper, packaging, converting and manufacturing supply chain. The latest updates on energy markets confirm that the scenario remains delicate. The average PUN in May stood at around €119/MWh, compared with approximately €93/MWh in May 2025. Forward prices for Italian electricity for the third quarter of 2026 remain high, above €140/MWh, while natural gas continues to move in a highly volatile environment.

The TTF, the European gas benchmark, and the Italian PSV also remain at levels that confirm how far the energy issue still is from full normalization. Gas is no longer at the extreme peaks seen during the worst moments of the energy crisis, but it remains at very high, almost unsustainable levels, sensitive to every geopolitical development, LNG flows, Asian competition for supply and the trend in storage levels.

Tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, the repeated delays in defining an agreement between the United States and Iran, competition between Europe and Asia for liquefied natural gas, and rising electricity consumption linked to high temperatures are all factors keeping attention high. The issue, therefore, is not just the price of the day.

The real issue is uncertainty

For an industry such as paper manufacturing, energy uncertainty means working with greater attention to planning, efficiency, consumption, purchasing and risk management. It means dealing with a market where costs can change quickly and where European competitiveness continues to be tested against areas of the world where energy, bureaucracy and industrial burdens carry a very different weight.

Every sheet produced carries with it not only fiber, water, technology and work, but also a significant share of energy cost. And this applies to the entire supply chain: from paper production to converting, from box manufacturers to packaging, all the way to the companies that purchase materials to pack, protect and ship their products.

This is why the stability of industrial partners becomes even more important.

In such a variable market, customers are not only looking for the lowest price of the moment. They are looking for suppliers able to guarantee continuity, reliability, clarity and adaptability. They are looking for companies that truly understand the production process and know how to manage raw materials, energy, logistics and quality without losing control of service.

Artificial intelligence enters the factory

At the same time, the Italian paper industry gathered in Genoa for the 57th Aticelca Congress, one of the most important technical events for those who work in paper. Among the central themes was artificial intelligence applied to production processes.

This too is an important signal. Today’s paper mill is no longer just a traditional industrial plant. It is a complex system where energy, water, fibers, quality, maintenance, logistics and process control must interact every day. Artificial intelligence can help predict, optimize, reduce waste and improve production stability. But at the heart of it all, the same question remains: how can we produce better, with less waste and greater continuity?

Another concrete signal comes from the AI Demo Day dedicated to artificial intelligence for production, supply chain and procurement. The message is clear: AI is no longer just a promise or a conference topic, but a tool that is entering the real processes of manufacturing companies.

Predictive maintenance, quality control through artificial vision, stock and logistics optimization, intelligent automation, collaborative robotics and digital twins are applications that are becoming increasingly close to the factory floor.

For the world of paper, this development is particularly interesting.

A paper mill is a complex system, where production continuity, product quality, energy, raw materials, maintenance and delivery times must be coordinated every day. Artificial intelligence can help read data better, anticipate possible critical issues, reduce machine downtime, improve efficiency and support faster decisions along the entire value chain.

It does not replace people’s experience. It can make it stronger, better informed and more timely. Here too, the point is not to follow the AI trend. The point is to understand which tools can truly improve industrial work, reduce waste and increase competitiveness. Because the future of manufacturing will increasingly be made of plants, materials, human skills and data capable of communicating with one another.

From data to traceability: the case of waste

Another interesting signal comes from the world of innovation applied to industrial waste management. A2A Life Ventures has launched Materia, a solution that uses artificial intelligence and computer vision to improve the traceability of industrial waste. The system analyzes images, weight, codes and process data to reconstruct the path of materials within plants, all the way to their final destination for recovery or valorization.

Why does this news also concern the world of paper? Because the future of the circular economy will increasingly depend on the quality of data. It will no longer be enough to say that a material has been recovered, recycled or valorized. It will become increasingly important to prove it, measure it and tell its story with precision.

For companies, this means having more reliable information on their waste flows, recovery rates and environmental impact. Data will become increasingly central also for ESG reporting and for calculating emissions along the supply chain. This is an important cultural shift: waste is no longer seen only as something to be disposed of, but as a flow to be understood, traced and valorized.

And this is exactly the logic in which the recycled paper supply chain operates. Every recovered fiber has a story, an origin, a path and a new destination. The more technology can make this journey transparent, the more the circular economy can become concrete, measurable and credible.

For Cartiere di Trevi, this topic is particularly close. Our work begins precisely with the transformation of a recovered material into new industrial value. Recovered paper enters the mill, is selected, processed and transformed into new products for packaging, corrugators, box manufacturers, tissue and technical applications.

In the future, the ability to tell and document this journey more effectively will become a distinctive element not only from an environmental point of view, but also from a competitive one.

Technology, yes, but at the service of people

Pope Leo XIV, speaking about artificial intelligence, also recalled a very current principle: technology must remain at the service of people, work and the common good. It must not become a tool of domination or exclusion. This is a message that also concerns businesses. AI can be a great opportunity only if it is used with responsibility, transparency and attention to its concrete consequences on people, processes and communities.

This also applies to industry. Technologies are truly useful when they help people work better, make more informed decisions, reduce waste, improve safety and create value. Not when they become an end in themselves.

Digital tools are also entering companies’ everyday life

A small but interesting signal also comes from the world of digital tools. Notion, one of the most widely used platforms for organizing projects, company knowledge, documents, tasks and workflows, is now also available in Italian. It may seem like a minor piece of news, but it tells a broader story of transformation.

Companies, including manufacturing companies, increasingly need to organize information, procedures, documents, projects, maintenance activities, technical notes, commercial activities and internal knowledge. Competitiveness no longer depends only on plants or raw materials, but also on the ability to manage information well.

Tools such as Notion, increasingly integrated with AI, digital agents and automation, show that digital transformation does not only concern large technology platforms. It also concerns the way people collaborate, store knowledge, share procedures and make daily work more organized.

For an industrial company, this is a very concrete issue: less information dispersion, more internal traceability, faster data retrieval, and greater clarity between departments, technical offices, sales, purchasing and production. This too, after all, is efficiency.

Paper, recycling and collaboration between supply chains

Alongside energy and technology, sustainability remains central.

The news about the agreement between Assocarta and the Italian Composting Consortium points precisely in this direction. The idea of creating synergies between the paper supply chain, composting, material recovery and biomethane production reflects a clear perspective: the future of industry will not be made only of more efficient individual companies, but of supply chains capable of collaborating.

Waste can become a resource. Residues can enter new paths of valorization. The circular economy is no longer just a principle to be described, but a concrete industrial necessity.

And here we come to another important point: Italy continues to be a benchmark country in the recycling of cellulose-based packaging. The recycling rate has reached very high levels, well above the European targets set for the coming years. This means that paper, when properly designed, collected and managed, is one of the materials most consistent with the idea of a circular economy.

But there is an important point: recycling does not begin at the end of a product’s life.

It begins earlier. It begins when the right material is chosen. When packaging is designed without excess. When reliable suppliers are selected. When solutions are preferred that make industrial, environmental and economic sense at the same time. At Cartiere di Trevi, we live within this balance every day.

On one side, there are markets, costs, energy, the availability of raw materials and production needs. On the other, there are customers who ask for consistent quality, reliable deliveries, materials suited to their processes and solutions capable of responding to market changes.

Our work is to stand exactly between these two worlds. To transform recovered paper into new paper. To give continuity to a material that continues to be essential. To offer products for industry, packaging, corrugators, box manufacturers, tissue, displays and technical applications.

But above all, to be present, available and ready to listen to our customers’ needs. Because the world is changing. Online purchasing is changing. Supply chains are changing. Energy costs are changing. Technologies are changing. The way companies look at sustainability is changing. But one thing remains central: having reliable partners, capable of turning complexity into concrete solutions.

This week, too, this is exactly what we wanted to tell you. Behind every sheet, every board, every interlayer, every cardboard tube, every cover paper or packaging paper, there is not only a product. There is a supply chain that works, adapts, innovates and continues to seek value. Cartiere di Trevi is here. To listen to your needs, evaluate new supplies, respond to specific requests and support your projects with the solidity of those who know paper closely. If you need information, samples or availability: fill in the form.

We are always at your disposal.

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