According to a new article published this past week by the Dead Tree Edition blog, Mountain View, Cali., USA, coated paper was invented in the U.S., but after a major industry shakeup recently, most of the country's ability to make coated paper is owned by foreign companies. During the past two weeks, two momentous events occurred nearly simultaneously in the industry that makes coated paper for catalogs, magazines, inserts, and brochures:

 

First, NewPage, the largest North American maker of coated paper, sold its Biron, Wis., and Rumford, Maine, mills to Catalyst Paper, which shifted about 12% of the nation's coated-paper capacity into Canadian hands. Second, the purchase of NewPage by Verso, the continent's No. 2 maker of coated paper, was completed a year and a day after it was first proposed. The U.S Justice Department, fearing a combined Verso-NewPage would have too large a market share, required the sale of the two NewPage mills for the takeover to be approved.

 

This past summer, four U.S.-owned companies—NewPage, Verso, Appleton, and FutureMark—operated U.S. mills able to make about 4.8 million tpy of the glossy paper. That was 65% of the country's coated capacity. The rest was in the hands of companies based in South Africa (Sappi), Canada (Resolute and West Linn), Finland (UPM), and New Zealand (Evergreen).

 

Since then, FutureMark went out of business, Verso closed its Bucksport, Maine, mill, and NewPage sold the two mills to Catalyst. That leaves two U.S. companies (Verso and Appleton) with coated capacity of 3.4 million tons, just under half of the country's total. The new Verso, though, is by far the largest producer of coated paper in the U.S., with more than double the U.S. capacity of No. 2 Sappi.

 

Wisconsin-based Consolidated Paper invented coated paper in 1935, revolutionizing both the paper and magazine industries. But in recent decades, the innovations have come mostly from Western Europe and the investments have been concentrated in Asia. Even the tiny Canadian industry has, in the minds of many, out-innovated the U.S. companies, with the forerunner of Catalyst pioneering an efficient process of coating and calendering paper, and Kruger building the newest machine.