The Shrinking Paper Market
With paper mills across North America closing and letting thousands of workers go it raises the question, is the paper industry dying? It almost feels as if each day another mill shuts its doors, leaving less company’s competing for a shrinking market. Although there is no sign of paper ever completely disappearing, the demand is most definitely thinning out and analysts predict demand will fall at least another 18 percent by 2024.
So what is the cause for this? Kindles, iPads, e-mail, PDFs, the decline of first-class mail, and waning newspaper and magazine circulations are all to blame. Instead of buying the latest tabloid magazine at the local newsagents, people are now downloading it in digital format straight to their phone or tablet. With each generation being more tech savvy than the last it seems this is a trend that will only grow.
Ask anyone from an older generation who loves to read and they will tell you that there is no better feeling than turning over the last couple of pages of a book, but diminishing sales of physical books will suggest that this is no longer the case with sales of printed books falling by more than £150m in five years from 2009. This shift is causing paper mills to rethink their future with paper companies trying to handle the sinking demand for their product by cutting production. 117 paper mills have closed across America since 2000, with 223,000 jobs being lost as a result, a move that is being mirrored across the globe.
Even though the consumption of some papers (printer paper, newspapers, books, magazines, etc.) is declining, the demand for papers for the packaging industry keeps growing. This will give little comfort however to companies such as HP, Epson, Samsung, Oki, & Brother whose laser & inkjet printer sales depend heavily on peoples need for printer and copier paper!
If however you do prefer to print out a document for those on the fly notes scribbled all over the sheet then don't panic because at b2b.ie we have no intention of reducing our extensive range of printer paper any time soon. With brands such as Logic, Xerox, HP & Conqueror to name a few we have paper to suit every budget.
