North American Newsprint Shows Sharp Drop

The production of newsprint at North American mills dropped more than 15 percent during September as mills throughout the continent took substantial downtime to remove excess capacity from the market.

Reflecting this swing, the operating rate at North American newsprint mills stands at 82 percent of capacity, compared to the September 2000 operating rate of 97 percent of capacity. The operating rate over the first nine months of the year stands at 90 percent of capacity, compared to last year’s nine-month operating rate of 97 percent of capacity.

Total newsprint production stands at 1.087 million metric tons for the month, compared to September 2000’s production figure of 1.287 million metric tons.

Total production over the first nine months also declined. For this year newsprint production stands at 10.856 million metric tons, an 8.8 percent drop from last year’s nine-month total of 11.902 million metric tons.

Both U.S. and Canadian newsprint mills have been suffering equally from the steep slide in newsprint markets through this year. For September, U.S. newsprint production dipped by 14.7 percent to 451,000 metric tons. Meanwhile, Canadian mills realized a decline of 16.2 percent to 636,000 metric tons for the month.

The production total for the first nine months also pointed to the difficult environment for the North American newsprint industry. Through September, U.S. newsprint production dropped 10.5 percent to 4.469 million metric tons, while Canadian mills posted a 7.6 percent drop to 6.387 million metric tons over the same period of time.