PAPER PRICES.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 227, 22 September 1920, Page 8

PAPER PRICES.

POSITION IN ENO-ANS, NO IMMEDIATE REDUCTION.

"News on reels, 8d per lb.tf.o.r."— £74 per ton—this is the advertisement which most worries the newspaper proprietors of great Britain (writes the London correspondent of the Sydney "Sun," under dute of August 5). Ho goes on to cay that in the last two years 485 publications have doubled and trebled their prices, and vastly increased their advertising rates. They are still strenuously striving to obtain more revenue by charging , more for their papers, and by passing some of the extra cost of production on to the advertisers, but few of them can show any profit. The*cost of raw material—newsprint— has risen beypnd all anticipations, and the other charges governing the expense of newspaper production have soared in unison. Tlie "Times" hae just issued a fortnightly illustrated paper, and the price is 1/ef— just three timep what it would have been before the'wnr. A few of the big papers drawing large sums from enterprising business firms are managing , to keep ahead of the eonetant rise in coats. The. ''Daily Mail,' , with an actual circulation of " over a million a day, lias a contract for advertisement with Harrods, Ltd., for £100,000 for the next twelve months. Other papers without the same pull, how'«?ver, have to work under most "istracting conditions to make ends meet. Xo pulp or paper manufacturing mills disclose any desire to reduce their quotations.. England is trying to become partially independent of Scandinavia, her main source of pulp supplies in recent years, by acquiring forest concessions and interests in pulp mills in Canada. Some slight achievement has to be recorded in tliig direction. England is hoping that prices will not go any higher, but nobody is very sanguine on this point. Xor is there any optimism ac to any early substantial drop in, quotations.