Buyers' Guide

It has been another colourful and turbulent year in the newspaper sector with consolidation, dwindling circulation, budget cuts and environmental concerns still topping the agenda.

According to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), insert volumes have dropped by 13% and Howitt managing director Gurdev Singh confirms that these are tough times. Budgets are being hit and people are becoming more selective with their advertising, says Singh.

The drop in advertising is affecting pagination and special supplements. Publishers are no longer opting for stitch-and-trim glossy supplements designed to add value and combat diminishing profits. Instead: Publishers are putting the sections back into the newspaper to cut costs, according to Muller Martini product manager Martin Harrison.

Knock-on effects
With many publishers warning of declining profits production consolidation is rife and the knock-on effect is that smaller contract printers could find it harder to gain work in the sector.

Huge print and mailroom capacity has been created by the development of giant print sites like the new News International plant at Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, says Richard Maclean, sales director at Integra. This will certainly make it harder for smaller printers.

The voluntary PAS 2020 standard proposed by the British Standards Institute, and backed by the DMA, is also causing problems. While retailers are calling for publishers to bag newspapers as they arrive from the printer to avoid the spilling of inserts or supplements, the new standard proposes to scrap polywrapping and polybagging altogether in the DM sector, and if it happens there it is only a matter of time before the ban is extended to newspapers.

Dciscmm chief executive Yolanda Noble is just one of a growing number of DM printers who have voiced concerns about the standard. There are an estimated 900m weekend newspapers and 500m trade magazines polywrapped or polybagged each year. To wrapped these in recycled paper would put huge demand on paper stocks, says Noble.

And as free gifts and giveaways become the norm in the dailies, Maclean adds that printers are being asked to wrap thicker products with diverse gimmicks at higher speeds. However, he says his company’s machines could change to paper wrapping if required.