In a market update, Simon Fisher, the merchanting group’s commercial director for paper and visual communications, said that Antalis continued to experience “enormous challenges in raw material, logistics’ cost and availability, as well as increasing disruption in energy markets as global events continue to impact all industries”.

He said Antalis was receiving cost increase notices as well as emergency surcharges from a number of its core suppliers. 

“To ensure sustainable levels of supply Antalis will be increasing the prices of the majority of its products from Monday 5th September 2022. We expect these increases to be within a range of 8-20% but it is becoming likely that some increases may exceed this level in some areas.”

Fisher described the situation as “fast-moving and challenging”, and said there was a “substantial risk” that the notification would need to be updated again before the September implementation date. 

“However, our belief remains that it is better to give notice as early as we can,” he said. 

The higher end of 20% is understood to relate to some of the specialist substrates in the Antalis portfolio. 

One customer commented: “It is actually getting worse – even the increases are increasing.”

Other merchants are also known to be preparing similar notification letters after major papermakers raised prices. 

Printweek understands that the increases for standard printing grades are in the region of 8%-12%. 

An industry source commented: “It is a growing concern for us that print is becoming too expensive for many end users – I sincerely hope that the mills that are posting extraordinary profit levels realise that they may be killing the goose that lays their golden egg.

“Whilst I don’t expect paper groups to make paper at a loss I just hope they realise the damage may speed up the decline of print."