Specialty Paper Bonanza

I was looking through my collection of fine paper swatch books the other day and the huge availability of extraordinary specialty papers in North America shocked me. I've been intimately involved in distributing and designing specialty papers for 18 years. The number of specialty papers available today just crept up on me and took me by surprise in retrospect.

When I first started the CTI Paper Group back in 1989 specialty papers were relatively rare in the main stream commercial printing markets of North America. The really beautiful papers were almost all made in Europe. A few European companies, Zanders and Fedrigoni, had some small distribution here in the USA. The sheet sizes were weird (metric), the packaging was weird (package wrapped no cartons) and the prices were, well out of sight by the standards of the day. The fact was at that time that if you wanted a really unique printing paper you had to source it from a European paper mill. My theory has been that because of Europe's older paper mills, less efficient machines, together with their inherent understanding of design and fashion and the need to add as much value as possible to the fiber coming off of the older less efficient machines that this led European manufacturers to create the large variety of specialty papers they still offer today.

The Tide is Turning

Our company began creating specialty papers by designing papers in partnership with Euro paper mills in the mid 1990's. We developed, for commercial printing markets and broad distribution, the first and most widely recognized naturally translucent paper, Glama Natural and it's companion Glama-lope envelope in 1994-ish. We later decided to bring some of our efforts home when we designed and manufactured Aspire Petallics, the first ever mica coated colored paper to be manufactured in North America. We have subsequently redesigned our Currency metallic paper and we continue to manufacture Currency here in the state of Wisconsin. I assure you that other great papers are in the hopper.

In the last 4 to 5 years other leading North American paper mills, previously only uncoated text and cover mills, have begun to develop interesting value added specialty papers in the European tradition, probably for the same reasons I mentioned previously. Some examples of these more progressive mills are; Wausau Paper who now has some great metallics, Fox River Paper (now Neenah Paper) developed a very nice metallic line and Smart Papers has for years has manufactured Kromekote cast coated paper and now in more recent years has added some very nice additions to its flagship line with foils and patterns.

Land ho

The biggest advantage of North American made value added specialty papers to the consumer is availability. Early on in my sales career I was fond of saying, "You can have a great paper at great prices and if you can't get it when you need it, who cares." This statement remains true today. Lead times for papers made here are generally faster and inventories tend to be higher. The fact of the existence of the Atlantic ocean sitting between supplier and consumer can't be changed and vessels only sail so fast. Another factor favoring North American paper mills versus European paper mills is the dollar /euro conversion. As the euro goes up against the dollar European papers can tend to become more expensive. Domestic paper mills prices tend to move up only when the market as a whole moves keeping most domestic papers in line with each other.

Europeans will continue to create gorgeous papers and now they will have more competition from domestic paper companies which is always good for the consumers.