Volume 6, Number 3
Sep 1993

Three Quarters of P/W Capacity Now Alkaline or Neutral

There are about 123 mills in the Lockwood/Post's Directory that produce market grades of printing and writing paper. They have a total daily production capacity of 56,000 tons per day (tpd).

According to the Abbey Publications database, mills that are 100% alkaline or neutral account for 31,615 tpd, or 56% of the total. Most of those 31,615 tons are alkaline: only 1300 are 100% neutral.

Mills that produce both alkaline and acid paper have a total capacity of 19,033 tpd, or 34% of the total. Many of them are in the process of converting to alkaline, and the picture changes constantly. Perhaps it would be fair to estimate that half of those 19,033 tpd are alkaline. This would bring the alkaline/ neutral capacity in U.S. mills up to 74% of the total.

Mills that are 100% acid make up only 9% of the total capacity. (Actual production figures cannot be cited because production vanes too much to measure easily. Lately, U.S. production has averaged about 90% of capacity.)

Capacity is somewhat overstated in these figures, because some mills have additional production lines, for which separate capacity figures are not provided. Where they are available, they have been taken into account.

This information from the Abbey Publications database is based on Lockwood-Posts's Directory. Information on alkaline and acid production in each mill is gathered by calling company headquarters and/or the mill.

In summary: