Ukraine - Make a difference NOW!

I'm sure most of us working in the graphic arts industry, whether a designer, printer or paperperson have wondered if there is anything positive that we can do to help with the Ukrainian-Russian war ...well now there is!

An article appeared in PrintWeek yesterday which highlights a global paper manufacturer who is still producing paper in Russia. The company is called Mondi and are one of the largest paper and packaging companies in the world with manufacturing facilities and offices all around the world including facilities in Russia which employ 5,300 people.

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

Paper shortages?

...not quite, but there are some supply issues in the market!

At this time of year, there is usually a seasonal spike in demand, however this year millions of tonnes of commercial and publication papermaking capacity is being taken out of the market. Pulp prices have also increased sharply this year. Earlier this year I wrote about the closure of two StoraEnso mills in Kvarnsveden and Veitsiluoto mills which will actually cease production in the next couple of months, which takes more than a million tonnes of paper production out of the market.

The result is that papers which would normally be available from a mill in 4 weeks may now take 8 or 10 weeks, so planning ahead is a very smart idea!

You can read the Printweek article here...

https://www.printweek.com/news/article/paper-supply-crunch-buyers-urged-to-plan-well-ahead

Posted by Justin Hobson 27.09.2021

The worst day in the paper industry, so far...

I don't wish to be over dramatic, or a gloomy doom monger, but this news today is the worst that I can ever remember in my career...

I'm not sure the Printweek headline conveys the gravity of the situation. StoraEnso are one of the largest pulp and paper producers in the world and they have announced that they are closing two mills (Veitsiluoto and Kvarnsveden) which account for over 1.3 million tonnes of paper - and that's not including the pulp production that is also going. This is truly dreadful news and sadly includes well over 1,000 job losses.

You can read the full article in Printweek HERE.

https://www.printweek.com/news/article/stora-enso-to-cull-more-capacity-with-radical-mill-closure-plan

You can also read about it in the Financial Times here:

https://www.ft.com/content/921982b6-94f3-46df-ae55-e30985239424

These closures are on top of the fact that StoraEnso pulled out of coated paper production last year with a reduction of 1 million tonnes of two sided coated paper.

Last year I wrote an article on this blog about the state of the industry HERE.

We have dealt with StoraEnso for decades and we feel terrible for those people who are set to lose their jobs. These are incredibly difficult times in the paper industry but sadly inevitable as the ongoing contraction of our industry is set to continue for many years to come.

Posted by Justin Hobson 21.04.2021

The State of the Industry....

At the beginning of every year, the US President delivers a "state of the union" address, so I thought it might be of interest to readers of this blog to read about the current state of the paper industry.

An article which appears in this month's Print Business magazine has an excellent summary of the industry, which with their kind permission, I have reproduced here...

Paper producers strive for balance
While it is less necessary than in the past, paper remains the key substrate for all manner of printers and UK consumption is falling and has been falling for a number of years. This does not automatically equate to a similar decline in print jobs: shorter print runs and so on will have a greater impact on consumption of paper. Take newspapers for example. Newspaper volumes are dropping, but this is not matched by the disappearance of titles.
Across Europe, Euro-graph, and association of paper producing mills, reckons that demand for newsprint had after ten months fallen 6.4% in 2019. The British Printing Industries Federation (BPIF) referring to to figures from the Confederation of Paper Industries, reckons newsprint demand in the UK is down 6.3%. However there is divergence with other types of paper, reflecting the relative popularity of certain paper types in different countries.
According to Euro-graph demand for all types of printing grades of paper is 7.9% down. This excludes boards and packaging grades and specialist papers used for all manner of purposes, filters, wadding, insulation, batteries and more.
The BPIF puts the total decline for graphic papers at 3.5%, 2.4% if newsprint is excluded. The UK figures may also have been distorted by stockpiling ahead of the planned brexit deadlines, in the spring and at the end of October.

Across Europe demand for coated woodfree papers was down 9.7% and demand for uncoated woodfree papers was 3.9% lower. This is a significant difference to the UK equivalents where coated woodfree (CWF) exhibited a growth in the second quarter of 2019 compared to 2018.
This, however, is not likely to prevent the closure of paper production capacity. In coated woodfree, the looming closure of StoraEnso's Oulu mill to CWF production in September this year will remove 1.3 million tonnes from the European market, roughly equivalent to the current excess of supply over demand.
This also explains the difficulties that some mills have had in emerging from liquidation under new financial backers. Demand has continued to slide: Sappi reckons that overall demand is down 13% a year and is looking for a way to match capacity to demand. Others are doing the same and if they succeed will allow paper suppliers to strengthen prices later in the year.

The above article is an extract from the full article, which you can read here:
https://printbusiness.co.uk/news/The-shape-of-the-UK-printing-industry-is-still-changing/123220

Reproduced with kind permission from Print Business magazine. With thanks to Gareth Ward, Editor.
https://printbusiness.co.uk/

Posted by Justin Hobson 20.02.2020

...from paper to data!

Below is a picture of a paper mill or rather, it's a picture of what was once a paper mill.

In what seems like a strange twist of fate with a healthy dollop of irony, Google acquired Stora Enso’s Summa paper mill in Hamina, Finland, in 2009. The paper mill which used to produce 350,000 tonnes of newsprint and magazine paper, had suffered persistent losses and with a downturn in demand, the  long-term profitability prospects were poor.

Using the pre-existing infrastructure of the mill, Google bought the site to estabish a state of the art data center. The large site sits on the beautiful Baltic Sea and is able to use untreated sea water, piped through a pre-existing tunnel, to cool the servers naturally. This natural cooling, together with large volumes of cheap electricity and green energy sources makes this former paper mill an ideal place to convert into a server farm.

With the paper machines removed, rows upon rows of servers - data is the product now.

Last summer, Google announced Phase II with a further €150 million investment. This will involve the restoration and conversion of an Alvar Aalto-designed machine hall. Interestingly, Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) is the Finish born architect and designer who ranks alongside Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright in the modernist movement, so an important piece of Architectural history is also being preserved.

So what can we make of this? Well one thing it highlights is that just because something appears on the internet, it doesn't mean that there is no cost and no impact on the environment.

Ironically Google have just launched a "Go Paperless" campaign in 2013: http://www.paperless2013.org/
and perhaps unsurprisingly, there's been a bit of an anti Google backlash:
http://www.twosides.info/UK/Verdigris-urges-print-and-paper-industries-to-Go-Google-less

So if you have a client that says "Oh, I'll put it on my website because it saves paper and that's better for the environment" maybe get them to think again and look at these articles.

http://www.google.co.uk/about/datacenters/locations/hamina/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvar_Aalto
http://www.storaenso.com/
http://www.twosides.info/

Posted by Justin Hobson 24.01.2013