Increased Cost of Paper

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 15, 16 April 1908, Page 30

Increased Cost of Paper

It is; perhaps, .not generally known that the paper used in newspaper offices is made of wood pulp, and that several acres of spruce are necessary for a single edition of a large English or American daily. The continuous and increasing depletion of the United States and Canadian forests is naturally causing newspaper proprietors some uneasiness as to the source of their supply in the future. As it is,. "it has been necessary to go farther back year by year, so tfhat tihe cost of transport has been increasing, whilst the demand has also been on the increase. The cost oi wood for papermaking purposes has increased by fifty per cent, during the last two years, and there is every prospect that there will be . a further rise in the near -future. . In view of a probable -shortage of timiber at a not very remote period the news that the proprietor of a sugar Cane plantation in TrMdad had succeeded in converting 84 per cent, of megass (waste cane) into paper pulp, will be received with satisfaction by newspaper proprietors. It appears that the use of waste cane for paper pulp is not a new discovery, as it was tried in Auckland and Brisbane some years ago,' but it was found that the process was* too expensive to make, it a financial success. Perhaps a more modern onetbod^has been discovered which will allow of the conversion to be carried out on a remunerative basis. In face of a threatened shortage of timiber, (says an American exchange) the amount of wood consumed each year for pulp has increased since IM<991 M <99 from 2,000,000 to 3,500,000 cords. The year 1906. marked an increase

of 93,000 cords in the imports of pulpwood, the highest average value, per cord for all kinds, and a con-sumption-greater by 469,05i3 cords than that of any previous year. " * Spruce, the wood from which in 1599 three-fourths of the pulp was . manufactured, is still the leading wood, but it now produces a' little less than 70' per cent, of the total. How well. spruce is suited to the manufacture of pulp is shown, by the fact that during ' a period in which the total- quantity of wood: used has doubled and many new woods have been introduced; the - proportion, of spruce -pulpwood has remained nearly con"stant in spite of the drains upon the spruce forests for other purposes. During; this time three different woods, from- widely, separated regions, have in turn field the rank of leader in the lumber supply. ~ '-. Since 1899 poplar, whiqh .for years was used an connection with spruce to the exclusion of all other paper woods, has increased in total .quantity less than 100,000 cords, and is now outranked >by hemlock. . Pine, balsam, and - cottonwood . are used •in much smaller ■ amounts. New York-alone consumes each year over 1,250,000 cords of wood in the manufacture of pulp. The average cost of pulp delivered at the . mill was £1 10s. The totak value of -the wood -consumed in the United States 1 in 1906 was £5,300,000. The chief item determining the ' price of paper is. the cost .of pulp. The choirical processes of paper-making; which better preserve the wood fibre, Are gaining over the mechan cal process. In 1899, 65 per cent, of the wood was reduced by the mechanical process ; in 1906, less than 50 per cent.