Q3 Paper Outlook — Beaten to a Pulp

Opportunities for savings can be found in doing things like combining roll sizes from multiple customers to give mills better trim utilization, finding better ways to package and ship rolls, etc., he points out.

One trend in the industry that is directed right at the price issue is the growing use of supercalendered grades (SCA) that compete with the lightweight coated stocks, O'Brien notes. "The quality of SCA has improved, so users can get a similar quality product that throughout the pricing cycle (up and down) will always be on the lower end."