SIC 5111 Printing and Writing Paper

SIC 5111

This industry classification includes wholesale distributors of printing and writing paper. Products of the industry include fine paper, envelope paper, and ground wood paper. Wholesale distributors of computer paper and stationery are classified in SIC 5112: Stationery and Office Supplies.

NAICS CODE(S)

422110

Printing and Writing Paper Wholesalers

INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT

In 2003, there were about 1,860 printing and writing paper wholesale distributors in the United States, generating revenues in excess of $7.8 billion. The industry employed almost 29,000 workers, the vast majority of whom worked in firms employing fewer than ten people overall. But this trend was changing by the mid-2000s as a result of difficult industry conditions. As the industry fell on hard times in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, paper producers and paper wholesalers alike underwent a wave of consolidation.

Resource Information Systems Inc. (RISI), in its 2003 North American Graphic Paper Forecast, reported that printing and writing paper was falling behind the pace of the U.S. economy. Notoriously chained to the performance of the overall economy, the paper industry as a whole tended to patiently weather downturns as a lapse in the broader market. In the early 2000s, however, that connection was beginning to slip, as demand for printing and writing paper lagged behind even the sluggish U.S. economy.

Overcapacity through the late 1990s and early 2000s was largely to blame for the decline in prices the plagued the industry. But the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA) found that the sustained downturn that marked the paper industry through the late 1990s and early 2000s had begun to level off by 2003. As the industry stabilized, prices were expected to creep upwards again. Still, while demand and prices were expected to rebound with the improving economy through the mid-2000s, analysts expected the pace to lag a bit behind the overall economy. To make matters worse, the U.S. industry also faced fierce foreign competition, as overseas firms delivered quality improvements at a brisk pace and sold them at aggressive prices, helping exacerbate the downturn in U.S. paper prices.

ORGANIZATION AND STRUCTURE

Printing and writing paper is grouped in four large categories: uncoated groundwood, coated groundwood, uncoated freesheet, and coated freesheet. "Groundwood" refers to paper made from mechanical pulp, and...