Newsprint Price Rises

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28167, 4 January 1957, Page 3

Newsprint Price Rises

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) TORONTO, January 2.

The Abitibi Power and Paper Company announced today a 4-dollar a ton increase in the price of newsprint, effective on March 1.

The increase will bring the basic New York price of Abitibi’s newsprint to about 134 dollars a ton.

A company spokesman said the increase is due to increased cost, particularly higher freight costs, and that the rise will offset the higher costs only partly. Abitibi is one of Canada’s largest newsprint producers. Mr M. J. Foley, president of the Powell River Company, Vancouver, said the four dollars increase is ‘‘not realistic.” He suggested that his company was considering an increase beyond that amount.

In New York, Mr A. B. Meyer, president of the Bowater Paper Company, said that his firm had been considering a price increase ‘‘because our costs have gone up staggeringly during the last year.”

A spokesman for the Crown Zellerbach Paper Company in San Francisco said that his company was not considering ‘‘any change in our price for newsprint.” In Holyoke, Massachusetts, Mr William Dwight, president of the American Newspaper Publishers' Association, said:

‘‘We do not believe conditions in the newsprint manufacturing industry justify this. . ‘‘The newsprint manufacturers are reaping record profits in contrast to the daily newspapers that are finding increasing economic pressures which make it more and more difficult to maintain the safe profit margins necessary to fulfil their obligations as the basic mass medium of communications.”