Paper — Price Hikes Blindside Printers!

Small Potatoes?
Should the price increases take hold and be sustained, will that really be significant for printers since they're still short of previous levels? In a word, says Paparozzi, yes.

"Our industry is so competitive and profit margins are under such pressure that even moderate increases in paper prices, from the low levels we've seen over the last year, are still significant," he maintains. "The pressures are so great that any increase in cost is a concern. One critical aspect of our industry is that even a slowing of our economy is a concern, because we are an industry that has a shortage of profitable work and an excess of product capacity. So it doesn't take a recession to cause problems for margins in our industry.