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 cost engineers add the new quarter with preliminary Cost Date for the latest quarter as soon as possible; it takes 2 full months after the end of a quarter for the latest Cost Date quarter to be online. Reason: Fastmarkets' engineers need to collect the Regional Unit Cost for all cost items (wood, gas, electricity, labor cost, etc.) in 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.

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.