Price Rise “Nail In Coffin ” Of Printers

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30120, 2 May 1963, Page 15

Price Rise “Nail In Coffin ” Of Printers

The decision to manufacture fine printing papers at Kinleith paper mill and the resulting price increase was another nail in the coffin of New Zealand book printers, said the president of the New Zealand Book Publishers’ Association, Mr Albion Wright, last night. New Zealand printers were already losing business from New Zealand publishers to overseas concerns because they could not compete economically. Mr Wright was commenting on an address by Mr K. H. Wade, a director of Bowaters Paper Company, New Zealand, Ltd., to Christchurch printers. Mr Wade is consultant to New Zealand Forest Products, Ltd-, for its fine paper project.

Mr Wade said the most important feature of the establishment of a fine paper mill in New Zealand was that it made possible a dramatic expansion in commercial production. Prices of Kinleith papers were in excess of some papers previously imported mainly because of the comparatively small requirements of the market in a wide variety of qualities and sizes.

Previously all papers used by New Zealand printers had been imported and had in the main been severely controlled by import licensing, resulting in a rather hand-to-mouth delivery situation. Some 7500 tons of commercial grades of fine writing and

printing would be manufactured at the Kinleith mills of New Zealand Forest Products, Ltd., in the year started on April 1. First supplies of New Zealand-made fine papers should shortly be arriving in the printers’ hands.

The Kinleith mill was not aiming to make a complete range of all papers required by the printing industry. This meant it would still be necessary for speciality grades to be imported from overseas, he said.

The president of the Canterbury Master Printers’ Association, Mr D. L. Donovan, said tihat printers this year had a lot of new problems in converting to the use of local papers. They had new methods of buying and new methods of deliveries and of course, new prices.

It was rather unfortunate that just as the printing industry had to face these new problems, the Government had seen fit to exempt from import licensing a wide range of books that would have hitherto been printed in New Zealand. “Unless something is done to correct the trend that has now developed, much of the volume of printing will be taken from the local industry and done overseas.” said Mr Donovan. “The situation is such that it is not difficult to imagine overseas printing concerns setting up sales organisations in New Zealand. “It is a problem of the Government’s making and it is up to the Government to take corrective measures which are already known to it,” he said.