Russian publishers are unhappy with the quality of domestic coated paper
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After Russian printing houses switched to domestic coated paper, book and magazine publishers began to reduce and partially cancel orders, market participants say. In printing houses, the trend is attributed to the fact that customers are dissatisfied with the quality of domestic paper. Its manufacturers, however, deny quality problems, noting only limitations in equipment performance. Experts say that canceling orders will lead to a reduction in the range of printed products, but not to an increase in prices.
Interlocutors in printing houses interviewed by Kommersant said that they had a significant decrease in the number of orders on coated paper from publishers of books and magazines. They explain that the quality of domestic paper has deteriorated. Coated paper is used for the production of glossy magazines and expensive books, as well as other printed products for which high brightness of colors is important.
The reduction in orders is confirmed by Pareto-Print (prints books and magazines), directly linking the trend to the fact that customers are dissatisfied with the quality of domestic coated paper for highly artistic publications. “As a result, some orders have been cancelled,” says company CEO Pavel Arsenyev. According to him, there is essentially no analogue of European coated paper in Russia.
In May, at the conference “State, Trends and Prospects for the Development of Publishing Printing,” the company’s former production director, Alexey Oborin, said that Pareto-Print cannot buy paper with a density of 90 g/sq. m and 105 g/sq. m, which was previously supplied from abroad. According to him, this year the company began having difficulties purchasing materials with a density of 115 g/m2. m. As a result, according to Mr. Oborin, Pareto-Print began testing samples from the Kama pulp and paper mill with a density of 115–130 g/sq. m.
After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, large suppliers of coated paper suspended operations in Russia (see “Kommersant” dated March 11, 2022). Among them are the Finnish-Swedish Stora Enso, the Finnish UPM, the South African Sappi, and the Polish-Swedish Arctic Paper. Market participants, they said, mainly cooperated with European manufacturers of coated paper because it was faster and cheaper.
After the crisis, Russian printing houses were forced to reorient themselves to Asian and domestic producers, notes Kommersant’s interlocutor in the book market. The largest Russian publishing houses (including Eksmo-AST, Alpina) have almost completely switched to Russian analogues in the year and a half after the European Union imposed a ban on the supply of coated paper to Russia, RBC reported in August. First of all, these are “Omela” (“Ilim”) and “Ural Bright” (“Kama”).
“But the quality of their products is far from Finnish, plus one of the mills that previously produced coated paper with a density of 54 and 60 g/sq. m, now does not sell anything less than 110 g/sq. m,” says one of Kommersant’s sources in the printing market. According to him, “the quality of the paper is below average.”
Ural Bright denies a reduction in orders, claiming that “the number of requests for coated paper is growing, there are no problems with production, only a limitation in equipment productivity.” “The paint-varnishes-paper (cardboard)-machine connection is very tight, and due to changes in component suppliers, this connection, which has been established for decades, needs to be reconfigured,” the company clarified. “Omela” did not answer “Kommersant”.
“Ilim simply cannot cope with either the volume or the product range,” says the former head of the Association of Internet Publishers, Vladimir Kharitonov. “The fact that publishers have reduced orders is understandable – they realistically assess the situation.” According to him, the technical part of the industry is “still in shock from the consequences of the sanctions.” As a result, Mr. Kharitonov explains, the industry “has to look for some other place, thinner paints, worse glue, simpler paper.”
The reduction in orders may affect not so much the price as the assortment, the expert believes. The Ministry of Digital Development expects (see Kommersant on July 12) that the Russian book market will decline in copies by more than 9% by the end of 2023.
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