Attn: Watchtower Purchasing Department
I just wanted to share this gem I recently came across in the Denver Post:
The North American paper industry is in rapid decline. Mills have let go thousands of workers and are competing for a shrinking market. A mill in Sartell, Minn., that closed this year after a Memorial Day explosion was the latest to go dark.
"It's kind of disheartening," said Jim Skurla, an economist at the University of Minnesota at Duluth. "Paper's never going to disappear, but it's going to be smaller than it has been."
River towns in the forest from eastern Washington to the coast of Maine have lost more than 100 paper mills in a wave of consolidation in little more than a decade — a trend most people in the industry expect to continue. Wisconsin has lost nine paper mills since 2005.
North American demand for three types of coated and supercalendared paper — shiny magazine and advertising paper — has fallen 21 percent in the past decade, according to the Pulp and Paper Products Council.
Kindles and iPads, e-mail, PDFs, the decline of first-class mail, and waning newspaper and magazine circulations are all to blame. Analysts predict demand will fall at least another 18 percent by 2024.
The shift is forcing paper mills and mill towns to rethink their future. To survive, they will need to find new products to make out of wood.
Now this is very telling, since low demand usually means much higher prices... It's no wonder you guys are selling off printing assets around the world... you're really just cutting your losses before the tower finally collapses in the next 2 or 3 decades... good luck with that...