Meanwhile, Stora Enso will raise the price of coated mechanical reels by 7-8% and uncoated mechanical reels by 5-6% for all customers from 1 January.
We have been saying we would like to implement this for some three weeks to our customers, said Stora Ensos divisional director for magazine paper, Fabian Langenskild. I believe that after a long time the market is improving and would support an increase.
The last major price increase in this sector came in 1999, said Langenskild, and since then it had been hit by constant price erosion.
However, Mike Lamb, group production manager at Highbury House Communications, said 30 per tonne was quite a leap so its quite surprising.
And a senior buyer at a leading magazine printer thought the move was desperate, but that the market was so weak that others would follow suit.
Sources said the increases could lead to publishers passing on costs to the end-user, lower paginations and print runs, or even the shelving of new launches.
Ironically, the increases were announced as figures from the Advertising Association revealed that business magazines were suffering more than most from the decline in advertising, with spending down 7.8% on constant prices for the three months to June.
There has been no word yet from papermakers M-real or Myllykoski on their pricing plans.
Story by Andy Scott
