Catalyst's Lightweight Newsprint Supports Latin American Market Strategy

Catalyst Paper, Richmond, B.C., Canada, is taking a major step forward in its Latin American market development strategy with the launch of Marathon Lite, a high-performing newsprint grade with a basis weight of only 40 gsm. Growing Catalyst's long-standing presence in Latin America is a focus of its emerging markets strategy and leverages freight-logical proximity to serve this market from its Pacific coast manufacturing facilities.

"Latin America is a market of 500 million people, which makes it very attractive. We have long-standing relationships with major publishers in the region and the demand for reliable supply of high quality papers is trending up," said Catalyst president and CEO Kevin J. Clarke who will be meeting with several key customers in the region in April, including publishers in Peru and Colombia.

With a growing middle class and less high-speed Internet penetration than Canada and the U.S., Central and South American newspapers are still the most popular vehicle for information. Growth in middle-class disposable income also means advertisers want space in those popular papers.

"This reinforces our focus on innovation in every part of our business including in newsprint, a product that we've been manufacturing for 100 years," said Clarke, "while we continue to march up the value curve offering the broadest range of specialty paper products available from a single supplier in Western North America ."

In launching Marathon Lite, Catalyst will benefit from established market acceptance of its products in the region. Besides Peru, readers in El Salvador, Panamá, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Venezuela already use British Columbia-made paper on a daily basis.

Hugo Holmann, owner of the Nicaraguan publisher La Prensa, said that "we are pleased that our readers and advertisers have noticed a tremendous improvement in the printing quality of our newspaper since we changed to Catalyst. We also see a great opportunity of improvement with the 40-gsm sheet. This brings more efficiency to our distribution chain all the way to the very end, allowing our street vendors to carry less weight, without affecting our production efficiency."

Lighter basis weight papers use less fiber to make the same printable area. Not only is Marathon Lite more thrifty in its fiber use, it's made with more than 85% renewable energy and certified to Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) standards.

Catalyst Paper produces diverse specialty mechanical printing papers, newsprint, and pulp. With three mills in British Columbia, Catalyst has a combined annual production capacity of 1.5 million metric tons.

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