Wednesday November 10, 2021
Complicated Christmas business
Paper trouble? There are still books – still
From Kevin Schulte
Paper is currently in short supply, the supermarkets are running out of paper bags, and packaging material is becoming more expensive. One reason is the corona crisis. Is even a popular Christmas present in danger because of the paper shortage?
For the book trade, the months of November and December are the most important of the year. The industry earns around a quarter of its annual turnover in the run-up to Christmas because books do that third most popular gift are under the Christmas tree. But there is a problem this year: paper prices have risen immeasurably. Many publishers fear that the printing presses will soon have to stop and run out of books for the holiday business.
For example, waste paper in wholesalers was 222 percent more expensive in September compared to the same month last year. The import prices for waste paper and cellulose, an important raw material in paper production, have also risen by almost 75 and 46 percent, respectively Federal Statistical Office.
A paper crisis in Germany? Not quite, Andreas Geiger, spokesman for the industry association “Die Papierindustrie”, restricts in the ntv podcast “Wieder was learned”. “To speak of that would be a very exaggerated thing.” There are currently “isolated delivery bottlenecks for printing paper”, he admits. After the lockdown “there was a great demand for print advertising, especially in the field of direct mail”.
The retail sector wants to guide consumers into the shops with its advertising in order to get in the money that was lost through lockdowns and shutdowns during the corona crisis. “This sudden demand comes up against limited production capacities, which have been reduced further and further in recent years,” says paper expert Geiger. Due to digitization, the demand for paper has continued to decline.
Delivery bottlenecks at publishers
In the meantime, there is a lack of paper mills that can produce so-called graphic paper for printing, writing and copying. Production has been in Germany for the past ten years according to the Federal Statistical Office dropped by almost a third – from around 6.6 million tons in 2010 to 4.5 million tons in 2020.
The newspaper crisis is also having an impact: as newspaper publishers are finding fewer and fewer readers, they are reducing their print runs. This in turn reduces the production of newsprint, in comparison to 2010 it has decreased by almost half. Newsprint, which usually ends up in the waste paper, is now missing for recycling.
Print shops are coming under increasing pressure because of rising paper prices, says the Federal Association of Printing and Media (BVDM). In the case of publishers without long-term supply contracts, delivery bottlenecks will inevitably arise. Short-term reprints have become more difficult due to significantly longer lead times, it was recently said by the German Book Trade Association.
“No major disruptions in Christmas business”
“We are assuming that the situation will calm down again in the foreseeable future, that is, that the demand will level off on the long-term trend and thus be in balance with the supply again,” said “Paper Industry” spokesman Geiger optimistically. that the situation will soon improve. “But one thing is clear, manufacturers are currently under enormous cost pressure. Above all, when it comes to prices for waste paper and pulp, but also for energy. And this cost situation will of course be reflected in the price negotiations.”
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Can this concatenation of different circumstances mean that ultimately there are fewer books under the Christmas trees? In theory, yes. But it is not likely.
The Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels expects price increases and delivery problems in the medium term, but not yet for the Christmas business. “We are assuming that the situation on the paper market will not lead to any major impairments – neither in terms of prices nor in terms of availability,” said spokesman Thomas Koch on request from ntv.de.
The German paper industry has changed
Andreas Geiger from the industry association “Die Papierindustrie” is also cautiously optimistic. “Since the crisis affects the whole of Europe, there will probably be one or the other situation in which the publishers will also have difficulties getting enough paper for their bestsellers,” he says in the “Wieder Was Learned” podcast. The end user will not notice much of these problems.
In the next year, however, it will. That is the logical consequence of digitization, explained Violinist. In general, paper consumption will continue to fall rather than rise. Then suddenly more books for the Christmas business could not be printed, says the association spokesman. “What has been lost in terms of production capacity will not be restored because the consumption of paper will continue to fall in the long term. In the meantime, almost two thirds of paper production in Germany consists of packaging paper and just under one third is used for the manufacture of paper . “
The German paper industry is one of the largest in the world, but it has reoriented itself in recent years – away from the production of graphic paper and towards packaging paper and cardboard. This is what the booming online trade needs to pack and ship its articles. After all, a book bought online does not end up unpacked in the mailbox.