MAJOR MERCHANTS ASSURE INDUSTRY OF SUPPLY

Both Ball & Doggett and Spicers are assuring the commercial print market that they have alternate supply lines to the 1000 tonnes a week of UWF that was being produced for local printers by Opal Paper at the Maryvale Mill.

However, the copy paper market is less assured, with hundreds of office products stores and newsagents across Australia expected to run out of paper products over the coming weeks, according to supplier Office Brands.

Following a Supreme Court judgement against VicForests logging in favour of a threatened yellow bellied possum Opal Paper has said it will run out of logs, with white paper production set to stop around 23 December.

According to Industry Edge’s Annual Strategic Review output from 2021-22 the mill produced 255,000 tonnes of paper, of which 51,000 tonnes were UWF for local consumption, as well as 116,000 tonnes of copy paper, with the remaining 88,000 tonnes exported.

Tony Bertrand, national marketing manager at Ball & Doggett, told Print21 that, “There is no issue for us, we have alternative products readily available.” Similarly, David Martin, managing director of Spicers said, “We have no problems, we have been making alternate plans for some time now, and have supply lines firmly in place.”

The Maryvale mill produced almost all copy paper for Australia, with its Reflex brand alone having an 80 per cent market share. Supplier Office Brands, together with the Australian Lottery and Newsagents Association, Group Newsagent Supplies and Office Choice has written to the Minister for Industry, Ed Husic, seeking his urgent intervention to temporarily suspend anti-dumping duties on paper imported to Australia to open up supply.

Printers and suppliers that deal directly with Maryvale are also scrambling to deal with the impact of the Supreme Court judgement, which has stopped the logging that was supplying Australian Paper’s Maryvale mill, impacting on supply to the trade.

Speaking to Print21, one major print trade house that it has been told by Maryvale that 100 tonnes of paper would now not be coming, and it has been told it will have to go overseas for its supply. A supplier to the trade told a similar story to Print21 about now having to source UWF from overseas.