Coated paper supplier NewPage Corp. generated third-quarter 2009 net sales of $791 million, compared to $1.13 billion in the third quarter of 2008. The company’s net loss was $138 million, compared with a net loss of $61 million a year ago.
The drop reflects both lower sales volumes and lower average price, according to the company. The company had sold 893,000 tons of paper in third-quarter 2008, but only 708,000 tons in the quarter just ended.
In a statement, NewPage president and CEO Richard D. Willett, Jr. attributed the drop in demand for coated paper to “decreased advertising spending and magazine and catalog circulation, and was largely a continuation of the same macroeconomic forces we saw in the first half of the year, exacerbated by increased low-priced imports from China and Indonesia.”
Willett added “Today, we are experiencing seasonal strengthening and some benefits of the postal service's volume incentives for catalogers. We believe as the U.S. economy recovers, so will our paper volume. To ensure that we participate in that recovery on a level playing field, we have filed new trade cases to address the growth of unfairly traded coated sheet products from China and Indonesia in the U.S."
