Impact on Canadian merchants and printers
In most sectors, printers buy their paper from merchants. For uncoated woodfree and coated woodfree grades, merchants in Canada are often buying from mills in the U.S. such as Verso, New Page and IP. Domtar sells to Canadian merchants in Canadian dollars, but typically the American mills sell to Canadian merchants in U.S. dollars. This means that when the value of the Canadian dollar fell by 23% in 30 days, Canadian printers got a 23% price increase unless the merchants absorbed the loss. In many cases, that is exactly what happened: a merchant who bought paper on September 29 in U.S. dollars with 30 day terms, and sold it to a printer on that date in Canadian dollars, would have paid 23% more for that paper when he wrote the check 30 days later.

Jack Miller is senior consultant, North America, for Pira International, a leading supplier of strategic, marketing and technical consulting in paper, print and packaging. jack.miller@pira-international.com

Research and development in the field of inks for inkjet printing has never been greater, with a migration from the original water-based dye and pigment inks to the presently popular mid and high solvent to UV-curable inkjet ink types. Driving the shift to UV is its ability to change physical states from a liquid to a resilient hard film almost instantaneously. Within the last two years there has been a incredible rush toward the use of UV curing in most print markets, driven by developments in ink technology as well as demand from printer manufacturers and end users.

By Jeff Burton – read the whole story

You really can’t miss this opportunity to test equipment especially engineered for runs as short as one. See digital presses and inkjet printers that span a wide range of budgets, and offset presses no bigger than 29″ with greater automation and in-line options. Attend demos of sophisticated software to keep your shop running smoothly, and pick up effective tips from our full package of seminars.

PRINT WORLD 2008