Page 14 - BOSS Today Issue 43

BOSS Today #43 SPECIAL FEATURE

WE’VE GOT THE WHOLE

WORLD IN OUR HANDS

Or, how - in a declining cut office paper market – the drive for sustainability means there is still opportunity
for innovation, increasing sales and saving the planet.

How The Market Looks On Paper and, when they do, they are doing and B grade into the lower quality and
Overall, European demand for cut different things with it. For example, price product areas. Percival explains
office paper has been falling year on it’s now not unusual for schools to that this was due to “a resistance from
year, with Western European countries email documents to parents that consumers to accept price increases
accounting for the decline, as the latest require home printing and signatures and a general aversion to moving
market figures from paper industry added: this is something that simply prices by dealers/resellers for fear of
analysts EMGE show (see figure below). did not exist two or three years ago.” pushing consumers out to market.”
Accordingly, it is no surprise that the Another market dynamic during Furthermore, it seems unlikely that
UK has been very much part of this 2018 was a continuation of the the pressure on the paper market will be
downward trend, as Tim Percival, Office inflationary process seen during 2017, alleviated to any meaningful extent in
Divisional Director at Antalis, explains: caused by the significant increase in 2019, and with paper prices higher than
“Market intelligence indicates a year commodity pulp costs, driven by an they were two years ago, the appetite
on year total cut size volume decline in increase in global demand for pulp. for businesses to save on consumables
the UK of around 7% to 10%. This is the One result of these paper price costs is likely to be sustained.
unfortunate consequence of digitisation increases was a ‘race to the bottom’
and ‘read from screen’. Businesses in paper grade terms throughout 2017 Finding That Silver Lining
and consumers are printing less paper and 2018, with a trading down from A So where – under these rather
inauspicious circumstances – is growth
in sales, market share and value to be
European Cutsize Paper Apparent Demand gained in selling cut office paper?
(000 tonnes) - October, 2018 For many years there has been some

emphasis on recycling as perhaps
offering paper manufacturers and
Region October 2018 Growth % pa Year To Date Growth % pa
distributors an opportunity for
differentiation and – to some extent
Western 218 -8.6% 2,215 -6.2% – this has been successful. Certainly,
Europe Europe now has a leading position in
paper recycling: according to the CEPI
Eastern 43 1.8% 415 1.3% (Confederation of European Paper
Europe*
Industries), paper fibres are used 3.6
times on average in Europe, while
Total Europe 258 -7.0% 2,630 -5.1% the world average is 2.4 times. With
a commitment to achieve a paper
recycling rate of 74% in Europe by
* excludes Russia, Ukraine and CIS
Source: EMGE Cutsize Monthly Monitor, November 2018; EMGE & Co Ltd (www.emge.com) 2020, the European Paper Recycling
Council is currently reporting a recycling

14