Shrinking Uncoated Freesheet Demand Continues To Pose a Key Challenge

摘要

The North American market for printing and writing grades continues to move through a very unstable period. Demand for most grades continues to shrink due to fundamental changes in paper consumption in the developed economies of North America. This includes uncoated freesheet grades, where demand continued to decline last year.Back in 2010, a recovery in the U.S. economy resulted in a slowing of the fall in uncoated freesheet demand from the rapid rate of descent the occurred during the recession. Thus there was some hope that as economic growth continued paper demand might post a modest recovery. However, even as U.S. economic growth actually accelerated through 2011 and GDP rose each quarter [0.4%, 1.3%, 1.8% and 3.3%, respectively], paper demand continued to fall.