The Elliot Baxter managing director was speaking at the 92nd NAPM Annual Dinner on Thursday (19 April) at Park Plaza, Riverbank, London.
He said: "Big is not always beautiful. In my first 20 years in paper, many merchants sold up for two reasons: understandable personal gain for the owners and a belief that size in the paper industry would eventually conquer all.
"And where are we today? The most successful companies in the UK are the independents, who tend to be smaller and are all sticking to their core business of paper merchanting.
"Large size has become very difficult to manage, leaving problems for its current day leaders. But bigger organisations can – and should – still succeed if they remember the basics."
Elliott also said that the paper sector had to "adapt to changing times", with unnecessary costs quickly identified and removed.
"Multiple layers of management have to be stripped away to enable faster decision-making," he said. "For our printer and paper-using customers, we financially back them; we probably over-service them, but we must always ‘add value’. Then our future is assured."
