New RISI Global 15-Year Paper Outlooks Shows Demand in North America and Western Europe to Shrink 23% and 20%, while Eastern Europe and Asia Grows 49% and 39% Respectively

BOSTON -

Forecast Highlights:

- Countries such as the United States, England and Japan show the largest contractions while China and India show the largest gains.

- North American and European printing & writing paper producers are entering a new era that will be marked by a secular decline in some of their primary end-uses; such as printed magazines, catalogs, newspapers and direct mail advertising. Capacity closures will be a necessary ongoing trend for the next 15 years.

- Newsprint demand growth will moderate in developing countries like China as consumers and advertisers turn to the Internet for future information and advertising needs. When combined with the collapse of printed newspapers in North American and Europe, world newsprint demand will never return to previous levels.

- China alone will account for 89% of worldwide demand growth for printing and writing papers for 2009 to 2024

RISI, the leading information provider for the global forest products industry, today released the first of its annual set of 15-year forecasts. Today’s reports provide key data and analysis on end use market growth, supply/demand balance, price forecasts, capacity removals, competitive costs, and trade throughout both newsprint and printing & writing paper markets for Europe, North America, Asia, and Latin America.

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North America

According to John Maine, VP of RISI Graphic Papers, “Aggregate paper demand is the lowest seen since the mid 1980’s. The current recession represents an acceleration of a predominately structural decline started post 2001. In the case of printing & writing papers, 24 years of growth have been wiped out in less than two years. The market will average 2% declines through 2024, at which point we predict the market will have contracted an additional 18% from today’s levels.”

Maine continued, “Newsprint will decline at least 5% per year, as major publishers continue the loss of circulation and advertising dollars while reshaping, reformatting and redefining the daily newspaper to be less than daily.”

Europe

Sampo Timonen, Director of RISI European Graphic Papers said, “We forecast that in every paper and newsprint grade and in every major end use, the West European demand in 2024 will be less than that in 2009. Western European graphic paper in 2024 is expected to be 20% less than 2009 levels, thus representing 6.6 million metric tonnes of loss. Eastern European markets will be increasing, but will not reach the per capita usage levels of Western Europe until after 2024. Additionally, the low cost producers in Asia have been increasing their exports when their domestic demand has fallen, thus displacing further European producers. This trend is questionable in the future, but certainly Europe will be losing its role as an export producer.”

Asia

“China is the dominant paper growth story in the world,” said Sandy Lu, Economist for RISI Asia Graphic Papers. She continued, “Having eclipsed the US as the world’s largest producer of paper in 2008, the trend looks to continue. However, we predict that within the forecast period consumers and advertisers will focus more on the Internet and the growth story will moderate. This represents a significant development that is not currently occurring in China, but we believe will start to develop shortly.”

For More Information or to Subscribe

Today’s outlooks are the “North American Graphic Paper 15-Year Forecast, European Graphic Paper 15-Year Forecast, Asian Graphic Paper 15-Year Forecast and the 5-Year World Graphic Paper Forecast.”. The outlooks highlight the details of the growing shift towards paper consumption and production out of North America and Europe, and detail the factors and impacts throughout the paper industry.

RISI publishes annual 15-year outlooks, quarterly 5-year outlooks and, monthly 2-year outlooks (or monitors). The forecasts released today cover the paper and packaging markets, 15 year outlooks on fiber, recovered paper, and tissue are soon-to-be-released.

For more information please click here and visit: www.risi.com/graphicpaperforecast.

To request a detailed prospectus, please visit our contact us page for appropriate global contact information: www.risiinfo.com/pages/contactus

About RISI

RISI is the leading information provider for the global forest products industry. The company works with clients in the pulp and paper, wood products, wood biomass, tissue, timber, non-wovens, printing and publishing and financial services industries to help them make better decisions.

Headquartered in Boston (Bedford), Massachusetts, RISI operates offices in Brussels, Belgium; Atlanta, Georgia; San Francisco, California; Portland, Oregon; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Shanghai, China; Singapore; Helsinki, Finland; and Charlottesville, Virginia.

More information can be found at www.risi.com.

Press Contact Dan Blenk, RISI Marketing Director 4 Alfred Circle Bedford, MA 01730 Tel: +1-781-734-8942 dblenk@risi.com

Source: RISI

Dan Blenk, RISI Marketing Director, +1-781-734-8942, dblenk at risi.com / Logo: https://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080521/NEW122LOGO