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Newsprint market

We are all familiar with newspapers. This printing medium is one of the shortest lifetime printing mediums around. Cost must be minimized in producing these grades. Mechanical or recycled fibre is used for the same reasons it is used in the other mechanical paper segments. Newsprint is printed in a variety ways including letterpress, flexographic, cold set offset and rotogravure. The strategy for producing the grade varies by region of the world and by sub-region. This can mean that the way newsprint is made in Canada can be different from the way it is made in the Southern US and they both can be different from how newsprint is made in Europe and Japan. Some newsprint is made with a light pigmentation in Japan and these grades are referred to as Bitoko. These grades might use carbonate and/or kaolin type pigments for surface treatments. In Newsprint the control of pitch is very important to keep productivity at a high level. Basis weights are decreasing in the US and so opacification and ink strike through are very important. This is best achieved with calcined clay grades like Opacitex, Alphatex and Alphatex HP. Other regional areas may have similar problems and calcined clay is used in some mills in Northeast Canada as well as in Australia. In Europe filler clay is commonly used such as Intrafil 60 and Intramax. PCC is also commonly used in newsprint to control the opacity and ink strike through. Scalenohedral fillers like Opti-Cal HP are used in this application.