The pandemic, supply chain issues, and other factors are impacting many raw materials, including the paper market. These added costs are impacting a variety of industries that need them. That also translates to likely higher prices for print and mail operations. With lots of other numbers changing on your budget, how will you minimize these without compromising quality?
The Paper Market Numbers
According to a market report, all grades of paper are on the rise. Wood pulp is up 25% in 2021, averaging $250 per ton.
Papermakers can’t absorb these costs without passing them along. So, prices are skyrocketing across the industry. These companies are raising prices by 6-15%.
What Factors Are Influencing Price Increases?
Many components are influencing the market, including
- Freight shortages and price increases (both for ocean and trucking).
- Mill closures (some short-term during lockdowns and others permanently).
- Energy and fuel costs.
- Increased demands for tissue at home, which shifted production priorities.
Contact Us today to learn more about our print and mail services and how we can help offset your increasing paper and mail costs.
For businesses already facing lots of hits to their budget, this is one more wrench because paper is essential. Its usage covers many different facets. For those that handle print and mail in-house with in-plant, you’re already facing more expenses to produce transactional mail.
Upgrading and maintaining equipment, labor, operational costs, and more are already tipping these costs into a realm of fiscal infeasibility.
Options to Mitigate One More Cost Increase
Operationally speaking, print and mail is a cost center. If you’re running things yourself, there are capital and operating costs. These costs are going to fluctuate, making it harder to determine how they’ll hit your budget. You also can’t decrease the fixed costs even if you produce less print and mail if customers go digital.
So, what are your options to finally reduce print and mail expenses? Outsourcing to a company like PCI Group that specializes in this could be a great business move.
How Does Outsourcing Reign in Costs?
While no one is immune to material price increases, a transactional printer has advantages. First, we sign contracts with paper vendors for a specific allocation each month. That assures that we don’t have availability concerns or have to source new vendors regularly, which would drive up costs.
Additionally, we use the white paper factory approach. In this method, reams of white paper print both statements and envelopes together. There’s also no pre-printing because everything in the process is dynamic. The volume at which they print is also far greater than yours. Annually, we print about 1.5 billion pieces of paper.
There are more cost savings as well beyond inventory and material. You’ll no longer need to make capital investments in equipment. Nor will you need to pay for the energy costs or space to house it. You’ll save on postage because print and mail providers have postal experts and use address management and presort automation to take advantage of lower rates.
With a streamlined, compliant, and accurate process, you can feel confident that your print and mail operations may cost less but certainly won’t cut any corners.
