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The global paper industry is suffering due to a fall in prices. This has been caused by overcapacity, which is a result of over-investment during the 80's. The fluctuations in the currency markets have also damaged certain companies in the industry, particularly the depreciation of the US dollar and the devaluation of the Swedish krona. Many are trying to reduce costs which included reductions in environmental capital spending. This may not be sufficient to enable them to compete with low cost Asian producers, however.

FORESTRY & PAPER Stora Enso, Europe's largest paper company, will lay off 5,000 workers and book a [euro]670m ($881m) impairment charge as the Nordic paper industry steels itself for another [...]

TORONTO -- Weyerhaeuser, the US forest products group, has agreed to merge its fine-paper business withMontreal-based Domtar, underscoring the North American paper industry's struggle against the impact of the internet [...]

forestry & paper Finnish company's sale to ease liquidity M-real's rating put at negative outlook Sappi, the world's biggest producer of glossy paper, yesterday sidestepped the mayhem in global capital [...]

Greenpeace has accused Walmart, Tesco, Carrefour and other international companies of buying products from an Indonesian pulp and paper producer that it claims is destroying rainforests in violation of promises [...]

As creditors worldwide begin to close in on Asia Pulp and Paper Company, the debt-ridden forest products leader in non-Japan Asia, another group of predators is circling. Global paper industry [...]

FORESTRY & PAPER News analysis Over-capacity and weak prices take their toll, writes Robert Anderson When Stora Enso, Europe's biggest paper company, sold one of its mothballed Finnish mills to [...]

LONDON -- UPM Kymmene, the world's second-largest paper maker, yesterday said rising energy and materials costs had offset the impact of bigger paper deliveries and slightly higher prices, leaving the [...]

European equities edged higher as good performances from paper makers and the property sector outweighed losses among telecoms. The FTSE Eurofirst 300 rose 0.1 per cent to 1,319.57. Paper makers [...]

Paper is a sensitive ecological and political issue. It is easy to see why: paper consumes trees, which absorb carbon dioxide, which is a greenhouse gas, which contributes to global [...]

forestry & paper Norske Skog, the struggling Norwegian newsprint producer, is to sell its two Korean paper mills to private equity funds in a transaction worth Nkr4.3bn ($830m). The divestment [...]

Finnish paper manufacturers UPM-Kymmene and Stora Enso climbed yesterday, defying the gloom in European equity markets, on speculation that the two were considering a merger or an asset swap. UPM [...]

A forgotten aspect of the hype that accompanied all things media in the late 1990s is the rosy outlook for pulp and paper manufacturers. A decade ago manufacturing facilities changed [...]

Support Services Shares tumble to four-year lows Hussey bears blame for 'irregularities' Shares in De La Rue plumbed four-year lows yesterday after its chief executive resigned with immediate effect in [...]

The US public's hope of getting repaid for the bail-outs of Bear Stearns and AIG in the financial crisis increased yesterday after the Federal Reserve reported a paper profit for [...]

Finnish pulp and paper companies reported improved results in the first quarter in a sign that the worst could be over for Europe's struggling forest products industry. UPM-Kymmene announced better-than-expected [...]

Annual profits at DS Smith, the maker of recycled paper products and owner of Spicers, the office product wholesaler, jumped 40 per cent on rising demand for paper packaging in [...]

Prime View International, the Taiwanese maker of screens for Amazon's Kindle e-book readers, aims to consolidate its hold on the nascent 'electronic paper' industry by acquiring E Ink, the US [...]

TOKYO -- Hokuetsu Paper Mills, the target of Japan's first blue-chip takeover battle, said yesterday that it would form an alliance with Nippon Paper, the country's second-largest manufacturer, in a [...]

TOKYO -- Oji Paper's watershed Dollars 1.4bn bid for Hokuetsu Paper Mills, its smaller rival, appeared to make perfect sense. With the paper industry in Japan is in need of [...]

TOKYO -- Oji Paper yesterday effectively conceded defeat in its Dollars 1.4bn hostile bid to acquire Hokuetsu Paper Mills, putting an end to Japan's first hostile bid by an established [...]

TOKYO -- Oji Paper vowed yesterday to press ahead with its Dollars 1.4bn unprecedented hostile takeover of Hokuetsu Paper Mills, in spite of facing significant hurdles as the deadline for [...]

TOKYO -- Hokuetsu Paper Mills has accused local rival Oji Paper of bullying and trying tostifle competition in thelatest twist of Japan's first blue-chip takeover battle. In a report submitted [...]

TOKYO -- Oji Paper's hostile takeover bid for Hokuetsu Paper Mills, its smaller rival, jolted Japan's clubby paper industry out of its summer slumber, marking the first time a Japanese [...]

TOKYO -- The drama surrounding Japan's first hostile bid by a blue-chip company escalated yesterday when Nippon Paper entered the fray, buying a stake in the target company, Hokuetsu Paper [...]

TOKYO -- Oji Paper's unprecedented hostile takeover attempt on Hokuetsu Paper Mills took a new twist yesterday after Daio Paper, Japan's third-largest paper maker, said a union of the two [...]

TOKYO -- Hokuetsu Paper Mills yesterday was poised to become the first major Japanese company to usea poison-pill defence after it rejected an unsolicited Dollars 1.2bn offer from Oji Paper, [...]

JAKARTA -- Asia Pulp & Paper and April, the Indonesian paper producers, are accelerating the deforestation of Sumatra's jungles in spite of a bid to portray themselves as green, according [...]

NEW YORK and STOCKHOLM -- International Paper, the world's second-largest private landowner, plans to rip apart one-third of its business in an effort to escape from being squeezed between rising [...]

TORONTO and SYDNEY -- International Paper, the world's biggest pulp and paper producer, yesterday reversed its second-quarter outlook, saying earnings were likely to be lower than the first three months [...]

COPENHAGEN -- The labour conflict that has paralysed Finland's paper industry for almost six weeks deepened yesterday when a trade union representing 24,000 locked out workers rejected a state-mediated settlement [...]

TOKYO -- Chuetsu Pulp & Paper and Mitsubishi Paper Mills yesterday dropped a plan to merge after failing to agree on how to realign their sales and distribution networks. The [...]

Italy After five years, the Digitaleco probe is still not complete, write Guy Dinmore and Annamarie Cumiskey On the face of it, the investigation into Digitaleco, an Italian company that [...]

JAKARTA -- Two of Asia's biggest pulp and paper companies have warned they could close within two months with the loss of up to 1m jobs unless Indonesia's police and [...]

Dermot Smurfit has probably never done a better deal than buying Savon Sellu, a distressed Finnish paper mill he acquired in 2004 for Euros 20m (Pounds 13.5m). The retired Jefferson [...]

BEIJING -- Chinese coated-paper manufacturers hit by US import duties yesterday condemned the measures as unfair and unwarranted, amid concerns that large swaths of local industry would be vulner-able to [...]

BEIJING -- Beijing has criticised a US move to impose duties on China's glossy paper exports and, in the latest sign of trade friction between the two countries, demanded that [...]

Computers, light bulbs and lavatory paper must meet a minimum environmental standard if they are to be bought by the government or any public sector body, ministers said yesterday. The [...]

Paper and packaging It says a lot about the pace of consolidation in the paper industry that the markets should get so excited about a report that the world's two [...]

Talk about a cocktail of poison pills. Hokuetsu Paper Mills, the target of Japan's first blue-chip, hostile takeover, has spent the past few weeks erecting every barrier conceivable. Apart, that [...]

BEIJING -- CVC Asia Pacific, the private equity fund, yesterday said the scrapping of plans to invest more than Dollars 600m in one of China's largest paper makers was not [...]

BEIJING -- One of China's leading paper makers said yesterday that an agreement to sell a 30 per cent stake to a Citigroup-backed private equity fund for Dollars 623m had [...]

HONG KONG -- Buy-out firm CVC Asia Pacific has agreed to take a 30 per cent stake in a Shenzhen-listed paper maker for Dollars 623m, in one of the biggest [...]

BUENOS AIRES -- Argentine environmental activists have resumed roadblocks preventing access across the border with Uruguay, where a Dollars 1.7bn paper mill project is fraying relations between the two countries. [...]

BUENOS AIRES -- A truce between the presidents of Argentina and Uruguay over a controversial Dollars 1.7bn (Euros 1.4bn, Pounds 973m) paper mill project in Uruguay appeared to disintegrate yesterday. [...]

BUENOS AIRES -- The conflict between Argentina and Uruguay over a contentious Dollars 1.7bn (Pounds 980m) paper mill project in Uruguay subsided at the weekend after the presidents of the [...]

International Paper, the world's largest paper group, yesterday claimed victory in the takeover battle for US rival Champion International with a Dollars 7.3bn offer after Finland's UPM-Kymene bowed out of [...]

News Analysis Shift to electronic share certificates is set to hit trading volumes, writes Lindsay Whipp Thin trading volumes over the festive period in Japan are likely to get even [...]

Wayne Sanders, named yesterday as the chairman-in-waiting of Dr Pepper Snapple, is a veteran of the US consumer products industry - but with a 28-year career in disposable nappies and [...]

Europe's paper and packaging industry needs to shrink. Returns on capital are below 5 per cent, pricing has been depressed since 2001 and capacity utilisation stands at about 90 per [...]