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Books instead of vaccinations:
the book fair will take place in the Frankfurt exhibition halls from October 20 to 24
Photo: RONALD WITTEK / EPA
Since Wednesday, the exhibition halls in Frankfurt am Main have no longer been about the next corona vaccination, but finally about books again.
Since then, the world's largest book fair before the pandemic has reopened its doors to trade visitors, and from Friday afternoon onwards, all other literature fans can also enter the hallowed halls.
A total of 2000 publishers and companies from 80 countries have registered for this first major industry meeting, and more than 300 authors will be presenting their books.
The fair is significantly smaller than in 2019, when around 7500 exhibitors were still represented.
The prevailing topic is also different from then: the serious lack of paper and the associated price increases.
Six to eight weeks of waiting
The crisis comes at an inopportune time.
The publishers postponed new publications during the corona pandemic; now, at the start of the Frankfurt Book Fair, they should actually be brought onto the market in large quantities.
The important Christmas business is also imminent.
But now the printing companies and publishers are grappling with delivery bottlenecks and rising prices.
Books for which the demand suddenly shoots up due to a price or an interview could be particularly affected.
"Titles that we would normally have reprinted could possibly be difficult or impossible to get at Christmas," explains Thorsten Simon from the bookseller Libri to the dpa news agency.
Katrin Jacobsen, production manager at Kiepenheuer & Witsch publishing house, made a similar statement to the "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger": Previously you had to wait four to five days for the printing paper, now it could be six to eight weeks - or even longer.
But why are the bottlenecks and the associated price increases for paper actually occurring?
Recovered paper - too little and too expensive
One of the main causes is the lack of waste paper, with a share of 80 percent the most important raw material for the
Paper industry.
More and more paper manufacturers began to convert their structures to the production of packaging even before the corona pandemic.
According to the Association of the Paper Industry, the production volume of graphic paper that the publishing industry needs for its magazines and books has fallen by 40 percent since 2010 to six million tons.
In the same period, the production of cardboard boxes increased by 20 percent to twelve million tons.
The reason for the change is the strong increase in demand for cardboard and cardboard boxes due to the booming online trade, which has increased again due to the corona pandemic.
At the same time, the demand for high-quality graphic paper continues to decline due to digitization.
During the lockdown, the volume of recovered paper also collapsed, as trade and industry brought significantly less back into the cycle due to the closings.
In addition, savings were made on advertisements, posters and brochures, which also led to less waste paper.
The scarce supply in turn led to sharply rising prices for waste paper.
According to the industry service FOEX, high-quality waste paper, the so-called sorted deinking goods, currently costs around 235 euros per ton.
That is almost twice as much as at the beginning of the year.
Wood is also scarce and expensive
In addition to recovered paper, pulp is also required for the production of paper.
This raw material, which is mainly made from wood, which is scarce worldwide, has also become significantly more expensive since the beginning of the year.
The prices for pulp rose by up to 100 percent within a year, as Peter Schlürmann, division manager at the paper wholesaler Inapa, reported to the industry journal "Buchreport".
In his 39 years in the paper industry, this has never happened on this scale.
Added to this are the sharp increases in freight costs due to the global delivery bottlenecks caused by the pandemic and the associated shortage of containers.
After all, manufacturers in Germany get their pulp mainly from South America and Asia.
And last but not least, paper manufacturers are also struggling with the skyrocketing electricity and gas prices, which they in turn pass on to their customers.
Sooner or later publishers will have to pass all of these increasing costs on to their readers.
Bookworms should therefore be prepared for rising book prices.
Because, as is so often the case when a product becomes scarce, hoarding is also beginning in the paper industry.
As the industry service FOEX reports, the companies have now started to order waste paper well in advance.
Waste paper - the new toilet paper.
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