Page 20 - BOSS Today Issue 11

Paper market focus

SAVE
THE DATE
PAPER CONFERENCE
26/27 SEPTEMBER
LONDON

The paper market may be declining, but
office product suppliers and paper merchants
can still work together to counter the worst of it,

Tim Bowler, director of the National Association
of Paper Merchants, believes

here are some people in some quarters. How can
in the office supplies an industry closely associated
Tindustry who like to with office products be so
moan about what a tough time unconcerned about the impact
they are having, while others like that such price rises are having,
to moan about the people who they say.
moan. But such hostility becomes a
The one thing that has little harder to maintain, when
united both parties in recent you take a closer look at the
months is the price of one of changes that have been going
our industry’s most important on in paper production and
commodities – paper. According distribution itself in the past
to the latest figures produced decade - changes which in some
by the National Association way go towards explaining
of Paper Merchants (NAPM), these price rises.
average copier paper prices Because if there is one
have gone up 23 per cent from industry sector that really ought
December 2009 to December to be moaning about hard times
2011 – although the last figure it is paper merchants. Yet in a
represents a 3.5 per cent drop commendable way their own
in just one month from industry body is remarkably
November 2011. optimistic and resilient about
Such rises have caused fury the future.

20 BOSS TODAY | March 2012

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