High Package Costs Hit Food Makers as Recycled Paper, Corn Soar

In a year of food supply-chain disruptions hitting from all angles, here are two more things for producers and consumers to worry about: recycled paper and corn, and how they affect packaging.

Prices have spiked for both recycled paper — an important source of wood fiber for the packaging industry and used to make boxes — and corn, a main ingredient in the starch used in the glue that holds the containers together. That’s adding to headaches in an industry already struggling with high costs due to tight supplies and surging pandemic-era demand for shipments of all types.