“Very few Bowen notes are in private hands, especially from this exceptionally rare Leeds branch. "The York hand stamp shows part of the journey of the note, issued in Leeds and paid into a bank at some point in York.” Before coming to its present owner, the note was sold by British businessman and collector, David Kirch, who at one point had assembled the UK’s largest collection of provincial banknotes. Pattison added: “This is not the first Leeds note that Noonans has sold. An extremely rare £500 note dated 1936 was sold for a hammer price of £24,000 in March of this year.” The £5 Leeds note will go up for sale alongside several other rare notes, including an 1862 £5 note, valued at £10,000–£15,000 and a £50 note from 1845, valued at £15,000–£20,000. A very early example of a £2 note will also be up for sale, dated to 1798, and is expected to fetch up to £16,000. All four notes were printed at the Bank of England’s central london Threadneedle Street printworks, where all paper notes were printed from 1791 to 1917, when printing moved to the former Lunatic Hospital of St Luke’s in Old Street.
Tuesday 10 October 2023
Rare £5 for auction
“Very few Bowen notes are in private hands, especially from this exceptionally rare Leeds branch. "The York hand stamp shows part of the journey of the note, issued in Leeds and paid into a bank at some point in York.” Before coming to its present owner, the note was sold by British businessman and collector, David Kirch, who at one point had assembled the UK’s largest collection of provincial banknotes. Pattison added: “This is not the first Leeds note that Noonans has sold. An extremely rare £500 note dated 1936 was sold for a hammer price of £24,000 in March of this year.” The £5 Leeds note will go up for sale alongside several other rare notes, including an 1862 £5 note, valued at £10,000–£15,000 and a £50 note from 1845, valued at £15,000–£20,000. A very early example of a £2 note will also be up for sale, dated to 1798, and is expected to fetch up to £16,000. All four notes were printed at the Bank of England’s central london Threadneedle Street printworks, where all paper notes were printed from 1791 to 1917, when printing moved to the former Lunatic Hospital of St Luke’s in Old Street.
Tuesday 25 July 2023
UPM plans to close its Plattling Mill in Germany.
Monday 10 July 2023
Lana paper mill to close
Friday 27 January 2023
Another paper mill goes bankrupt...
Another sad piece of news for the paper industry...
Crown Van Gelder is a paper mill based in Velsen, Holland. They are best known for high-speed inkjet papers and recently added paper made from sugar beet fibres to its portfolio, which they came to discuss with us last year.Monday 10 October 2022
Print companies insolvencies on the increase...
Friday 23 September 2022
Arjowiggins Mills go into adminstration
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-63001007 |
https://www.printweek.com/news/article/administrators-take-charge-at-historic-arjo-mills |
Tuesday 6 September 2022
The paper market and energy crisis
As well as the paper mills listed in the article, the Lessebo mill in Sweden announced they would only be producing on a daily basis, depending on the energy costs for that day. Read the article HERE.
It's a very distressing situation and one that sadly affects all of us that are involved in design, print and paper. Please remember to discuss projects well ahead of time and also when talking to clients, suggest you build in a contingency in case the price of the project increases due to energy prices.
Posted by Justin Hobson 06.09.2022
Friday 27 May 2022
Unburnable book set to be auctioned
Friday 6 May 2022
Mondi announces Russia Exit
I have written on this blog before about the fact that Mondi was supporting the Russian economy and their war machine by continuing to manufacture paper in Russia. The good news is that Mondi has finally confirmed that it plans to divest its Russian operations because of the country's invasion of Ukraine.
Mondi has a substantial presence in Russia with a net asset value of nearly €700m (£600m), and have been reviewing options for their Russian operations since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.Saturday 30 April 2022
Printweek - Paper Supply Crisis
A few weeks ago a very interesting article was written by Jo Francis for Printweek magazine covering the situation, which you can read here...
https://www.printweek.com/briefing/article/navigating-the-paper-supply-crisis
A particularly interesting part of the article is an explanation of how in less than three years, the industry has lost nearly 6 million tonnes of paper & board production, listing the following mill closures and cuts in capacity:
Cuts to capacity – going, going gone – how nearly 6m tonnes per annum of paper production disappeared
Feb 19: Germany’s Scheufelen files for insolvency for the second time in two years. It had produced 140,000 tonnes of premium coated paper per year
Mar 19: Arjowiggins’ largest mill, Bessé-sur-Braye with capacity of 320,000tpa of recycled coated and uncoated papers goes into liquidation after parent Sequana went into administration
Mar 19: Lecta shuts down coated woodfree production on PM 8 (200,000tpa) at its Condat mill, with the intention of converting it to label and packaging papers
May 19: Stora Enso confirms exit from coated woodfree paper market, removing more than a million tonnes of capacity as a result. The 1.08m/tpa Oulu mill in Finland will be converted to packaging board
Feb 20: Sappi Europe says it will close 240,000tpa coated woodfree PM2 at its Stockstadt mill
July 20: UPM closes its Chapelle newsprint mill in France, which produced 240,000 tonnes of newsprint per year
Aug 20: UPM announces it will shut its Kaipola mill in Finland by the end of the year and decommission its three paper machines, an annual reduction of 450,000 tonnes of newsprint and 270,000 tonnes of graphic grades. It also puts a ‘for sale’ sign up at UK newsprint mill UPM Shotton
Aug 20: SCA says it will exit the publication papers market
Feb 21: SCA makes its last reel of publication paper at its Ortviken paper mill (756,000tpa) where three paper machines were shuttered and the site switched to the production of chemically pre-treated thermo-mechanical pulp (CTMP)
April 21: Stora Enso plans to close its Veitsiluoto (790,000tpa woodfree uncoated paper) and Kvarnsveden (565,000tpa SC magazine paper) mills in Sweden, slashing annual capacity by 35% to 2.6m tonnes
May 21: Zanders Paper goes into liquidation. It had two paper machines and capacity to make 325,000tpa of high gloss, cast coated paper, label papers, and board
Jun 21: Stora Enso sells its 310,000tpa Sachsen newsprint mill in Germany. The new owners will convert it to make containerboard
Sep 21: Newsprint production ceases at 250,000tpa capacity UPM Shotton. The new owner is converting the mill to produce cardboard
An excellent piece of research by Jo Francis, thank you.I suggest you read the whole article online.
Posted by Justin Hobson 30.04.2022
Thursday 3 March 2022
Ukraine - Make a difference NOW!
In my opinion we should all be putting Mondi under pressure to suspend production in Russia. It is only by large corporates like Mondi (turnover £5.5 Billion!) exerting pressure such as this on the Russian Government that could make a difference. It will affect the Russian economy and also get more people in Russia talking about the situation.
I have been racking my brains as to any contribution that I can make to this struggle and here (thanks to PrintWeek) there is something that all of us in the graphic arts can do!
Firstly, please email the CEO and Chairman of the Mondi Group (who I believe are both based in their Surrey headquarters)
CEO is: andrew.king@mondigroup.com
Chairman is: philip.yea@mondigroup.com
Jenny Hampshire is the Company Secretary and is listed as the Governance contact: jenny.hampshire@mondigroup.com
https://www.mondigroup.com/en/
Please email these people - get everyone you know to email them asking them "as a global leader in paper and packaging we ask you to demonstrate real leadership and suspend production at your sites in Russia" Flood their email boxes - PLEASE
Please use twitter, facebook, instagram and whatever social media you can to get the message across.
Secondly you can boycott Mondi products. Stop buying, specifying or using any Mondi products until they suspend their activities in Russia. In printing/graphics you may be familiar with their brands Color Copy, Nautilus Recycled and Pergraphica. Color Copy is the largest brand used in offices and copy shops and seen everywhere.If you are a printer - tell your paper merchant you won't be buying a Mondi product until they have suspended operations in Russia. If you are a designer or project manager, make sure you don't specify any of their products. If you are in packaging, make sure that packaging is not being supplied by Mondi. Antalis is one of the large Mondi distributors in the UK.
This is something we can all do which might just help a bit - it won't take much time to do ...and if you don't think you've got time, just imagine you've heard gunfire outside your window - that's what it's like for those poor people in Ukraine right now, so spend 5 minutes of your time and send some emails - it might just make a difference.
You can read the story in PrintWeek here: https://www.printweek.com/news/article/mondi-updates-on-ukraine-russia
Please note: I have nothing against Mondi. This is not personal. We have worked with Mondi in the past and they are a very nice company to work with - but they are in the situation where they can make a difference, so we must tell them!
UPDATE on 4th March - article in The Times https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c1855f14-9afd-11ec-8194-a993851c15ba?shareToken=84ac5bf545ddd88bda72c70ddc58cda3
Posted by Justin Hobson 03.03.2022
PS - for comparison, there is another global paper company called StoraEnso (interestingly some people consider Stora Enso to be the oldest limited liability company in the world having been incorporated in 1288!). Stora Enso is stopping all production and sales in Russia until further notice due to the ongoing invasion in Ukraine. Good for them! You can read more HERE
Tuesday 25 January 2022
Paper shortages and increasing prices...
Here is some important background information from the print and paper industry...
In this interesting article published in Printweek today, they report on statistics by Intergraf who are to the Brussels-based umbrella organisation for European national printing industry associations (including the BPIF in the UK). They report "the situation is so acute that in some member countries 40% of the paper needed from mid-February cannot be obtained"Tuesday 19 October 2021
Paper price news...
Monday 27 September 2021
Paper shortages?
Monday 10 May 2021
Zanders Mill closes
Wednesday 21 April 2021
The worst day in the paper industry, so far...
Wednesday 25 September 2019
ArjoWiggins mills saved in UK
Saturday 30 March 2019
ArjoWiggins - news update
Yesterday, there was a ruling by the court in France, who had the final decision on the offers that had been made by the various interested parties interested in buying the business or parts of the business.
Unfortunately the outcome is far from positive. The largest mill in Bessé-sur-Braye (Sarthe), which employs over 550 employees is to be closed. The various offers and recovery plans were unable to raise the necessary capital (15 million Euros was needed) and therefore must now close. Amongst others, the mill makes Cocoon, Cyclus, Maine, Satimat and Chromomat.
The Greenfield recycled pulp mill (Château-Thierry) has been sold to the German tissue producer Wepa and apparently all 75 jobs are to be saved.
The French court approved the plan for the takeover of the Le Bourray mill, located in Saint-Mars-la-Brière, by a local company CGMP which is a manufacturer of towels, tablecloths, paper rolls and is a long time customer of the mill. The good news is that they will retain over 100 of the original 260 employees, however the mill will cease production of all graphical papers which also includes part of the Cyclus range.
So will this mean the end of Cyclus? In terms of the manufacturing, the mills are closing, so that is that; but the chances are that some company will buy the Cyclus brand and keep it on the market. In fact Cyclus has only been made at these French mills since 2012! Cyclus was originally conceived in the mid 1990's at a Danish paper mill called Dalum, which was bought by ArjoWiggins in 2007 and subsequently closed by them after transferring production to their mills in France with the loss of 260 Danish jobs, which I wrote about here.
This recent news shows what a bad state the paper manufacturing world is in. The combination of decreasing demand and higher energy and raw material costs including both pulp and chemicals means that all manufacturers are having a rough time.
So what of ArjoWiggins Creative Papers in the UK with paper mills at Stoneywood (Scotland) and Chartham (Kent)? Apparently the administrators are conducting due diligence with a "preferred bidder" however it is worth remembering that this was the case with the French mills up to last week. Stoneywood makes ranges such as Keaycolour, Curious, Olin, Popset, Conqueror etc and Chartham makes translucent (tracing paper). I can't make a guess as to whether the mills will survive; certainly it is a matter of record that a multi million pound investment is needed for a new power plant at the Stoneywood mill which has just under 500 employees. ArjoWiggins also owns a mill in Quzhou (China) where they make the same tracing paper products (reputedly much cheaper) so although the brands certainly have value, who knows if the banks will support a bidder looking to buy these mills.
Antalis is a separate listed company but a majority shareholding is held by Sequana (the holding company which own ArjoWiggins). However on 21st March, Sequana filed for bankruptcy to protect themselves and to give them time to "restructure" the Antalis shareholding (this means selling shares to anyone else other than Sequana). How will this go? Given the fact that it was only in 2017 that Antalis had to withdraw their 'junk bond' offering to the market due to lack on interest, so maybe things don't look so good. David Hunter (MD of Antalis) has been making positive statements about the future of Antalis as you might expect.
You can read more following these links here...
https://www.printweek.com/print-week/news/1167297/largest-french-arjo-mill-to-liquidate-as-two-more-sold-on
https://www.printweek.com/print-week/news/1167209/arjo-admin-reports-reveal-full-scope-of-debt
https://www.printweek.com/print-week/news/1167220/antalis-md-speaks-out-on-sequana-arjo-situation
With thanks to Printweek.
Monday 17 July 2017
Delicious new swatch...
The range they developed is an uncoated range in seven different paper shades, and four film laminates (matt/gloss, gold and silver).
The new swatch shows all the colours and the metallics, together with printed examples, die cut and embossed samples.
Richard Burnett, market development manager at James Cropper, said "We have been working in the food packaging market for a number of years, making lots of bespoke papers for customers. But we recognised that there can be a time delay for a bespoke product and what we needed was an own range that is ready certified for food contact yet was suitable for the luxury end of the food market. Dolcelicious can be used for things such as confectionery, drinks and high end bakery items – in fact it is suitable for contact with dry, moist and fatty foodstuff."
http://www.dolcelicious.com/
http://www.jamescropper.com/mill/
Monday 6 March 2017
Dolcelicious Launch
The new Dolcelicious food contact-approved paper range was first shown by Croppers at theLuxe Pack trade show in Monaco last year. Dolcelicious is suitable for contact with dry, moist and fatty foodstuffs, it is available in 11 colours and meets a number of ISO standards. All papers in the range are FSC certified.
This is the first and (..so far) only, luxury direct food-contact paper available from stock and is a fantastic addition to our range.
We will be showing the range for the first time in the UK at the PrintWeekLive! exhibition in Coventry this week. You can read more about it here: http://www.printweek.com/print-week/news/1160448/fenner-paper-appointed-uk-stockist-of-new-james-cropper-range
If you would like to see samples, please let me know: justin@fennerpaper.co.uk
http://www.jamescropper.com/mill/