You touched the right word Ernst: consolidation.
I personally wondered already for a longer period of time how the market could sustain so many brands and types of paper. Yes, it's great to have that many to choose from, but is it sustainable? even if you take out the private labels/white label products, then still there is a very big portfolio of original products.
This is highly speculative from my side: My impression is that the market for high quality, expensive paper is very small. The mainstream home user/ printers goes for cheap paper or sends it of to an online printservice to get the output from their P&S camera's on paper, he/she doesn't care expect that it must be cheap. Those enthousiast that do care don't print that much (looking at myself). So that leaves a market where professional services are the real volume users and I suspect that they even can not support a market with 30 to 50 brands/types of paper. Sometimes even within one brand the choice is dazzling.
So time to consolodate for companies and eventually consolidation of portfolio. I will not be surpried if we have less choice in a few years then today.
A result of more competition on the market in my opinion and a good development given HM's paper making knowledge and Harman's coating technology. HM has more capacity since the Lana factory purchase and may be interested to shift part of their coating work from Sihl to Harman. All speculative of course. Maybe the low dollar has an impact too, Moab's papers for example are relatively cheap in the EU if I compare them to HM. Don't know what Crane's paper prices are in the EU since Intelicoat does the total distribution but it could be a similar difference. The UKP made a fall too versus the Euro. HM could even have an interest in Harman now, after their growth over the last 15 years it is time for consolidation in the market for HM. Whether this might have an impact on Innova? Don't know where they have their coating done. Yes... so many questions but the choices and prices of inkjet papers have never been as good as it is now.
met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla
Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/
