On top of the major headache of shipping, the greeting card industry is finding itself buffeted by a shortage of board supply as well as a continuing upward spiral of the costs of paper. The cost of paper has risen by 8%-10% over the last few months with another 5% increase on the cards for October, highlights Ian Braithwaite, commercial manager of Fedrigoni UK (which supplies many greeting card publishers and printers with board).
He explains that one reason for the supply issue has been the rise in ecommerce during the pandemic which has triggered a big “demand for delivery packaging materials, the vast majority of which are made up of paper or board. There is also a growing backlash against single use plastics among today’s consumers, meaning that paper and board in packaging has never been more popular. Lead times have therefore crept upward. Rising manufacturing and distribution costs, as well as the supply availability has impacted packaging board prices, which have been rising,” adds Ian. “While primarily affecting the packaging sector, this shift in the paper and board market has naturally trickled-down to other categories, particularly the supply of greeting card board, which often uses similar materials.”
In light of this Fedrigoni has increased its stock to cater for rising demand and mitigate the elevating lead times, but admits that “The road ahead continues to be difficult to predict.”
“The paper industry is experiencing serious issues with board supply at the moment,” confirms Michelle Mills, business development and marketing manager of specialist greeting card printer Windles. “The key reason for this is restricted or no tonnage coming from China and India to service the UK and European market. Coupled with higher demand for pulp globally, where a large percentage of plastic packaging products have been switched to paper and board during the last 12 months, this has also affected price increases of all materials that the UK’s lovely greeting cards are produced on,” she adds.
However, she stresses that the current situation further reinforces the merits of publishers specifying board that is made closer to home, something Windles has been urging publishers to do for the last four years, with its Incada campaign, which 90% of its customers have now switched to using.
Adam Short, md of The Imaging Centre, which digitally prints and fulfils for hundreds of greeting card companies is another who is caught in the crossfire of uncertainty over board supply and raw material cost rises.
“On the stock front, it very much different day different set of issues at the moment!! This sooooo frustrating as everyday life seems to be returning to some kind of normality,” says Adam. To mitigate as much as possible The Imaging Centre has “a large stock of the more popular boards not just in our warehouse but with our suppliers. However there has been cases where when we have had to top up and are waiting weeks rather than (post pingdemic) days, in turnaround.”
Adam acknowledges that the “price increases are challenging” and the new “bumper increases” have hit levels that cannot be absorbed meaning that some minimal additional costs to publishers are “unavoidable”.
Offering some light at the end of the tunnel, Abbie Ross, director of sales for paper company GF Smith says that while the company has been experiencing some delays in supply, she assured that “month on month we are seeing improvements here so expect the Autumn to be getting back to somewhere near normal.”
Top: GF Smith expects supply to be back to normal in the Autumn.
