What is the difference between Cost Date and Balance Date?

Cost Date affects the input costs (for consumables like fiber, energy, or for labor, etc.), whereas the Balance Date affects the operating conditions of the individual mills.

1. The Cost Date is updated every quarter. Fastmarkets RISI's cost engineers add the latest quarter with preliminary Cost Date as soon as possible. Interim quarter costs (market pulp and recovered fiber updated) should be out 30 days after the end of a quarter. Final cost updates should be ready roughly 60 days after the quarter has ended. The Regional Unit Cost for all cost items (wood, gas, electricity, chemicals, etc.) is updated for every single p&p producing country in the world. Some of these cost items only get published several months later and can thus be updated at a later stage too. This date can be looked up on the Regional Unit Cost page(s), where the revision date shows. The majority of unit costs are updated on a quarterly basis, except for labor costs that are typically updated annually.

2. Balance Date refers to our latest information about each mill’s operation: capacity, product and fuel mixes, consumptions, energy balance, etc. In other words, when Fastmarkets' engineers made a full review of the mill. This does not need to be made every year if nothing changes to the product mix or machinery at the mill, which is why you may see some older dates.