Setter's Market for the Swedes

PULP & PAPER

Swedish wood-pulp exporters were all ready for V-E day. Long before Germany surrendered they had loaded some 100,000 tons of pulp into ships prepared to sail for the U.S. Their warehouses were stocked with 700,000 tons of pulp for export to world markets.

But last week there were more than minefields in the Skagerrak to delay the shipment of Swedish pulp to U.S. paper mills. Mostly there was a matter of price. The Swedes, who know a seller's market when they see one, had set their price too high to get under the OPA ceiling.

The Swedes explained to OPA that pulp which sold at $40 a ton delivered to a U.S. port in 1939 should now be priced at $80 because production and shipping costs have gone up. U.S. ceiling price for a like grade of pulp is $74.

When Swedish pulp mills proposed a transatlantic freight rate of $8 a ton (v. $4 prewar), the War Shipping Administration suggested a rate of $12.50. The

Swedes darkly suspected that U.S. shipping interests were attempting to cash in on the world's demand for Swedish pulp.

Eventually the Swedes may shave their price to within OPA's price limits, and so restore their prewar export market for 1,000,000 tons of pulp a year to the U.S. But it was reported that the first three shiploads of pulp to sail through the Baltic this week were not bound for the U.S.; they were headed for Britain, Portugal and Argentina. These countries are more aware than OPA that prices for pulp and other commodities in the world markets cannot always be regimented to fit domestic price controls. Last week, in fact, ' the Swedes were rumored to have made a deal with the British--which would net the pulp exporters $10 a ton more than they could make by selling in the U.S.

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