The Stationers' and Newspaper Makers' Company event dubbed 'Are Print and Pixels Competitive or Complementary?' followed the summer publication of its controversial report, which predicted widespread decline in the demand for paper and print over the next 11 years.

According to the study, the key findings of which were presented to the audience by the report's author NKL Associates principal Richard Harris, the total demand for graphic paper and print will decline by almost a third between 2008 and 2020.

The findings split the debating panel. St Ives group technical director John Charnock agreed with the reports findings in principal – but added that pixels and print should be regarded as complementary and said that paper and print would continue to have a value and relevance and that the reduction in demand could and should be accounted for by a reduction in waste.

"There's a lot of waste in high-volume manufacturing industries like ours. But the key area is relevance. We have to make sure that the content of a product is relevant to the recipient, because reducing irrelevant content alone could easily account for the 30% reduction," said Charnock.

Bob Latham, sustainability director at Paperlinx Europe highlighted that, while the pessimistic findings may ring true for some sectors, for others, such as communications advertising, it will be a different story.

"The message is that you need to be extremely careful about the parts of the market you're exposed to," said Latham.

He also defended the report's findings, which have drawn some criticism: "I don't think the headline numbers matter very much; it's about the direction of the tide, not how high the waves are."

This was countered by Will Oldham, UPM UK general manager, who said that the report was unduly pessimistic and that he believed the paper and print industries would prove to be "surprisingly resilient".

While he agreed that the industry needed to restructure, he questioned the report's findings on how the different generations would consume information in the future and said that he thought it would be much more "nuanced than a simple shift away from paper to digital media".

This was echoed by Bertrand Lousteau, Sun Chemical marketing director, publication inks, and Publishers Association chief executive Simon Juden. Lousteau added that information continued to be easier to digest on paper compared to on screen and highlighted the environmental benefits of paper over electronic media.

Times Online assistant editor Tom Whitwell dismissed the negative environmental arguments and said that print and paper should focus on highlighting its positives, such as the growth of digital print and the perception of high value that a physical product has.

However, all of the panel, which was chaired by HH Pegg chairman Nick Steidl on behalf of the Stationers, agreed that the industry needed to do more to promote the benefits of print, through initiatives like Two Sides.

To obtain a full copy of the report, Future of Paper and Print in Europe 2008-2020, visit www.stationers.org.