8 . Directions: Complete the following passage by using the words in the box. Each word can only be used once. Note that there is one word more than you need.
| A.diversifying B.depressed C.shifted D.breaking E.hammer F.controversial G.initially H.converting I.wholly J.dump K.circulations |
Soaring newsprint costs make life even harder
The cost of paper around the world is rising to record highs, pushing up expenses for newspapers from Mumbai to Sydney. When times were good, before ads 1 online, newspapers had a supportive partnership with paper mills. As ads departed and 2 fell, they are now at the shouting stage.
Paper mills had the worst of it for years as newspapers went 3 digital or shut for good. The papers were able to 4 down the cost of newsprint from firms fighting for business as demand declined. Many hesitated to shut massive machines costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
That hesitance has disappeared; mills are taking out newsprint capacity and 5 . Norske Skog, a Norwegian paper firm, said in June it would close its 66-year-old Tasman Mill in New Zealand, for example. Many mills are 6 machines to make packaging for e-commerce.UPM, a Finnish firm, announced this year the sale of its Shotton newsprint mill in Wales to a Turkish maker of container board and packaging. For JCS Volga, a Russian mill, newsprint used to account for 70% of production; now half of what it makes is packaging. The pandemic, with people working from home, meant even fewer newspaper purchases, which 7 demand for newsprint again and increased the pain for paper suppliers. In the past 24 months European mills have responded by shutting almost a fifth of their newsprint capacity, says a buyer for a large British newspaper group.
Then economies reopened. Newsprint demand shot up. That, combined with much reduced capacity and coupled with soaring energy prices, has resulted in a price shock. Particularly 8 are energy surcharges that some paper suppliers are seeking to pass on.
Newspaper firms reckon this amounts to 9 contracts. European newspapers will have to pay newsprint prices that are 50-70% higher in the first quarter of 2022 compared with the year before.
Germany’s print and media industry association has warned that mills are going to force newspapers to 10 paper editions, hurting each other in the process. “It’s about the famous branch that both of them are sitting on,” it said recently. But mills can sell packaging instead. “We’re not going to save the publishing industry by being unprofitable ourselves,”says a mill executive in North America.
