Surplus Price Index
Methodology, sources, and limitations.
View the live indexWhat the index measures
The B2BPaper Surplus Price Index (SPI) is a free monthly benchmark of European surplus paper prices, broken out by paper grade, GSM band, and region. It tracks the price actually paid in surplus transactions, not list prices and not prime-paper prices.
The unit is EUR per metric ton, FCA mill, so freight is excluded. We publish the average, the min, and the max for each grade-region-month cell along with the sample size (N). Cells with N less than 3 are suppressed in the public table to protect counterparty privacy.
The full history is downloadable as CSV under CC BY 4.0.
Data sources
The SPI is computed from three input streams. Each transaction enters the index only after both sides confirm.
| Source | Weight | What it contributes |
|---|---|---|
| Completed transactions on B2BPaper | ~70% at maturity | Real spot prices for actual cleared lots. Most reliable. |
| Voluntary supplier surveys | ~20% | Three to five mills submit anonymized monthly summaries of their off-spec / cancelled / side-run sales not transacted through the platform. |
| Fastmarkets benchmark deltas | ~10% | Used only to sanity-check direction (not magnitude). When SPI moves opposite to the corresponding Fastmarkets prime-paper index for two consecutive months, that cell is flagged for manual review. |
The first published month uses a higher weight on supplier surveys (around 50%) because the platform-transaction sample is still building. Source weights are documented per release in the CSV header.
Geographic regions
Five regions today, expanding as sample sizes allow. Region is the mill's country mapped to one of:
- Iberia (Spain, Portugal)
- Northern Europe (UK, Ireland, Nordics, Baltics)
- Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Benelux, Czechia, Poland)
- Southern Europe (Italy, Greece, Cyprus)
- Eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia)
Buy-side region is not part of the cell key. The SPI tracks the sell-side mill region only.
Cadence
Monthly. New records are appended on the first business day of each month for the prior calendar month. The aggregation is idempotent. Re-runs only update cells whose underlying transaction set changed.
Quarterly we publish a joint commentary with the WorldPaperIndex Capacity Tracker so capacity moves can be read alongside surplus prices.
Known limitations
Three things every user should know before citing the SPI.
- Sample bias. The platform's sell-side is European mills only. Imported surplus from non-European mills is not in the index. Buyers sourcing from Turkey or Egypt should not assume the SPI applies to those flows.
- Grade-side bias toward containerboard. Containerboard (kraftliner, testliner, fluting) was the launch category. FBB, duplex, MG kraft, and tissue surplus volumes are smaller and the corresponding cells have wider confidence intervals.
- Status of "surplus". We treat any lot listed under the off-spec, cancelled-order, side-run, or warehouse-aged categories as surplus. Some mills sell at a slight prime discount for relationship reasons; those transactions are excluded.
How to cite
B2BPaper Surplus Price Index, retrieved [date]. https://b2bpaper.xdvu.com/mvp/app/market/price-index. CC BY 4.0.
For interview requests, methodology questions, or partnership data: press@b2bpaper.com.
Changelog
- v0, May 2026: initial public release. Containerboard grades only. Supplier-survey weight 50%, platform-transaction weight 50% in this first month while the platform sample matures.