Although some of the print group’s former factories have survived under new ownership, the web offset and gravure presses at Polestar’s Sheffield supersite have been closed down completely and a huge amount of work has moved onto different press sizes as a result.

“Particularly with the uniqueness of the Sheffield web offset presses there’s been an amount of big reels coming out of Sheffield that have been turned into 16s or 32s,” said Denmaur Independent Papers sales director Julian Townsend.

“We’ve been converting down an awful lot of paper,” he added. “And some customers who used to print their covers on reels are now producing them sheetfed, so we are helping them with new paper and helping them to use up their existing paper stocks.”

Paper converter Colombier UK in Sittingbourne has also been busy. “We have probably converted more than 500 tonnes of paper. We’ve been changing core sizes and altering reel widths for publishers and for mills,” said sales and production director Kevin Dyer.

“There is a lot of paper that doesn’t fit onto any other presses and it all needs conversion.”

Colombier has a patented device, the Mobile Reel Divider (also known as the Plunge Cutter), that can re-size reels at a customer’s own premises, saving on transport costs. Importantly, it doesn’t require the reel to be re-wound.

“We are not altering the tension of the reel, so the customer keeps their guarantee from the supplier,” Dyer explained.

Sappi UK managing director John Clinton said the manufacturer’s customer service team had been “pulling out all the stops” to help customers resolve their paper problems, while Stora Enso UK managing director Nigel Day said the firm’s customers were effectively falling into three camps.

“Some have decided to write it off and sell that paper, some are trying to do things with it by resizing, and some are still figuring out what to do. It has been extremely busy,” he said.

“We are looking at options for rewinding some paper for larger customers. The thing about paper is that it looks inert but it’s not, and it can get terribly expensive and it can go terribly wrong.”

The shifting of some former Polestar work from gravure to web offset, and vice versa, has also resulted in paper supply chain issues.

The 96pp long-grain and 64pp short-grain web presses at Polestar Sheffield used reels that were 2.86m and 2.64m wide respectively, and the 96pp reels required a larger core size of 150mm.