Forestweb North American Publishing Papers Index up fourth month in December

Dec 28, 2009 — Forestweb

LOS ANGELES, December 28, 2009 (Forestweb) — The Forestweb North American Publishing Papers Index rose 0.56% in December from a downwardly revised November and would have remained flat without that change.

The Publishing Index at 93.72 was down 22.91% from last year and also has declined this year by the same percentage.

The fourth monthly rise again was due to rising newsprint prices. Newsprint producers currently are seeking to implement announced back-to-back US$25 per tonne hikes for November and December.

The East Coast price for standard 30# newsprint, now at $515, is up $75 from the summer low but is well below the $750/tonne level of a year ago.

Supercalendered (SC_ and hi-brite prices are steady but are $100-$200/ton below levels of a year ago. Although coated paper demand is improving, prices for most publishing papers have remained level. The announced $40 lightweight coated (LWC) price hike failed, as did that for coated freesheet rolls.

The Publishing Papers Index is a component of the Forestweb Printing & Writing Index, which rose 0.3% from a downwardly revised November level of 103.80. For 11 months, the index is off 18.33% and is also 18.33% below the year-ago level.

Forestweb's price indices are Laspeyres indices that represent a statistical measure of a weighted average of printing and writing paper, pulp and paperboard prices and which summarize the relative changes in price levels over time using an arbitrarily chosen base period. All Forestweb indices use the base year 2000 except for pulp, which uses 2001 as the base year.

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