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If you think it's tough in the print industry at the moment, take a look at the paper sector.

This year alone, by my reckoning, going on for half a dozen UK paper mills either have been closed or face proposed closure, with Mondi’s Holcombe Mill being the latest potential casualty, where 90 jobs are on the line at its Lancashire site.

And it’s not just the UK that is being affected. Across the European paper industry, thousands of jobs have been lost and barely a week goes by without a mill being placed into administration or the announcement
of a paper machine or three being decommissioned.

Consolidation is rife too, with the rumour mill continually grinding out speculated deals, mills changing hands and then this week we had the announcement that Sappi is to buy the bulk of M-real’s graphic paper operation for €750m (£596m).

The end result of the closures and M&A deals is that huge swaths of capacity have been taken out of the market for good and the resulting logic is that prices will be forced upwards as competition weakens.
Hang on. Perhaps the print industry should actually be a little bit envious of the paper sector, from a business perspective at any rate.

The vast majority of paper manufacturers have been struggling for years, with profits dwindling, margins collapsing and costs skyrocketing – a familiar story for many printers I’m sure.

The difference is that the paper manufacturers are in the enviable position of being able to actually do something about righting the imbalance of supply and demand.

Sadly the same can’t be said about the print industry. Because while there have been numerous closures and hundreds of job losses, the general consensus seems to be that they will have little or no impact on print prices.

I guess the problem is that the paper sector is generally made up of very large companies and hardly any small ones, whereas the polar opposite is true in print, where SMEs are in the vast majority.

So, sadly, while we tend to share the pain, there’s little likelihood that we’ll be able to get equal gain from it.

Darryl Danielli is editor of PrintWeek.