THE COST OF PAPER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2244, 26 February 1921, Page 3

THE COST OF PAPER.

BURDEN TO NEWSPAPERS,

REPORT BY BOARD OF TRADE,

An important report has been furnished by the Board of Trade to the President (the Hon. E. P. Lee) on the subject of news-print supplies for the Dominion. The report has been prepared'at the request ofthe Place Minister, and states, inter alia: —

“It has been represented that tho news-print position in New Zealand is very serious, and it has been alleged by representatives of the newspaper proprietors of the Dominion that the causes of the present position are “(1) That one firm has a monopoly of the paper supply for tho Dominion. “(2) That the Canadian mills are exploiting the New Zealand press proprietors as compared with prices charged to the publishers of America. (3) That advantage is being taken of the adverse exchange rates with America by clearing credits through the United States instead of Canada. ' *

“(4) That, more than the actual freight to New Zealand is being charged. “An examination into the position certainly tends to confirm that a very serious state of affairs exists. There appears to be practically a monopolistic,, control of the supply for the Dominion. In outlining the position from their point of view, the newspaper proprietors represented that the pre-war price of newsprint ranged from £ll 10s to £l2 a ton, whereas the price fixed for paper for 1921 from the same .source (Canada) ranges from about. £O7 to £7O a ton. Even since' 1919 the price of paper has increased by over 100 per cent. The acuteness of the position can be best illustrated by a few figures. Below is given (lie pre-war and the present day costs of three metropolitan newspapers for paper alone:— Tonnage. Pre-war Present-day Used. Cost. Cost.' £ £ 500 6,000 34,000 750 9,000 51,000 2000 24,000 130,000 SELLING AT A LOSS.

The pre-war price is taken at £l2 a ton, and the present-day £OB. In actual fact as much as £9O a ton has been paid for paper within tho past few months, and there is still paper on order tit prices ranging from £BO to £IOO a lon. What the enormous advance in price means may be best shown by comparing (he amount realised from sales of the daily newspapers with the cost of paper itself. For the purpose of simple computation it may be taken that the average metropolitan daily paper in New Zealand runs about 4 A copies to the pound weight'of print-paper. These papers are sold to the public at 2d each, but the cost, exclusive of paper, amounts to about 2d per copy. The net return ranges from lid to about 1 l-3d a copy, though it is doubtful if any papers actually receive a clear 1 i-3d net if all publishing and dis. tributing costs are taken into account. However, it is here assumed that papers do show a return of 1 l-3d on sales. The ton of paper as supplied to-day from Canada is a gross ton weight —that is, packing and core are included. Allowing for this, and spoils, and waste, and unsolds, the net yield from a ton of paper is about 2,000 lb. weight of printed paper. Allowing 41 papers to the pound gives 9,000 papers from a ton of paper.

“The cost of paper is £OB, “The sale of 9,000 papers (yield per ton), 1 l-3d each, £SO, “Loss per ton, £18.”