Thursday, November 29, 2012

Port Hawk Pensioners Asked to Pay Co.

NewPage Port Hawkesbury pensioners told to pay back $5 million due to calculation error:
Former workers of NewPage Port Hawkesbury in Nova Scotia were told this week that they have been overpaid and will each have to pay back thousands of dollars.
Morneau Shepell Ltd., the current pension plan administrator, sent out letters to the pensioners telling them how much they will have to pay back, and blamed the calculation error on the previous plan administrator, Aon PLC.
The mistake was made while calculating the early retirement provisions years prior to the idling of the mill in 2011.  About 200 people who opted to take a specific front-loading pension option are the pensioners who are now said to have been overpaid, and owe a collective $5 million. Some people have found out they have been overpaid as much as $60,000.

Graphic Packaging to Buy A&R Carton's Beer and Beverage

Graphic Packaging to acquire A&R Carton's Beer and Beverage Packaging Business in Europe
Graphic Packaging Holding Company recently announced an agreement for one of its subsidiaries to acquire A&R Carton's Beer and Beverage packaging business in Europe. The deal includes two manufacturing facilities that convert approximately 30,000 tons of paperboard annually.

Canadian National Printing Association Announced

Formation of New National Printing Association Formally Announced: PISC and CPIA have formally announced the formation of a new printing association to be called Printing Industries of Canada (PIC). PIC "will serve as the national voice of the industry and will actively support and promote the health and growth of Canada’s printing industry," and will be officially launched in April 2013.

Magazines Continue Tablet Commitment

Magazines Double Down On Tablet Commitment: The magazine industry’s faith in the future of tablets is not easing up, even though advertiser support for digital editions has been slow in coming and these platforms still represent a small fraction of overall distribution for most books.
Leading among group publishers is Hearst, from whom iMonitor counted 89 apps, followed by Time Warner with 84, Conde Nast with 83 and Future Media with 82.

43% of Magazines Have Both Print, Digital Growth

GfK MRI: Over 40 Percent of Magazines Have Concurrent Print, Digital Growth: More than 40 percent of magazines surveyed saw concurrent print and digital audience growth in the fall of 2012, according to the most recent study by GfK MRI.

Next Issue Expands Title Offerings

Next Issue Expands Title Offerings Outside 5 Founding Companies:
Next Issue Media, the company behind the unlimited magazine app Next Issue, is a joint venture formed by five of the largest domestic publishers—Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp. and Time Inc. To offer readers more options, the company announced Thursday that it is expanding its iPad catalog beyond these five companies. The new offerings will include magazines from publishers like Mansueto Ventures, New York Media and American Express Publishing, among others.

BPA Members’ Circulation: Digital Now 21%

Digital Accounts for 21 Percent of BPA Members’ Circulation:
The number of publishers reporting digital copies is growing, new numbers for media-auditing firm BPA Worldwide show. A total of 532 BPA print titles reported digital circulation for the June 2012 cycle—an increase of 6.4 percent when comparing the December 2011 period.

Wired's Puzzel; Only in Print

Wired celebrated its 20th anniversary year in 2012 with a hidden and quite old-school little print puzzle. If you stack the January through December issues with the covers facing up, it reveals a (frankly hard-to-read) quote on the spines that Wired founding editor Louis Rossetto made in the first issue, in 1993: "Our first instruction to our writers: Amaze us." A reader in Riverside, Calif., named Ben Allen was the first to notice the pattern—realizing after the first nine issues that it was spelling out a message. He quickly guessed the complete line with a Google search. The puzzle's makers, Eric Harshbarger and Mike Selinker, were wise to stick with Rossetto's pithy first instruction to writers. His second was: "We know a lot about digital technology, and we are bored with it. Tell us something we've never heard before, in a way we've never seen before. If it challenges our assumptions, so much the better."

Kodak Accepts Improved Credit Facility

Kodak Accepts Improved, $830-Million Credit Facility: Eastman Kodak has received and accepted an offer from the Steering Committee of the Second Lien Noteholders Committee for interim and exit financing totaling $830 million in loans. The commitment is superior to, and therefore replaces, the $793 million commitment announced by the company on Nov. 12.

Folio: People On The Move

People On The Move | 11.29.12:
Source Interlink’s Automobile Magazine has added Todd Lassa as its executive editor and Michael Jordan as senior editor. Lassa joins the magazine from sister publication Motor Trend, where he was Detroit editor. Jordan joins the magazine from Edmunds.com, where he was an executive editor and more...

ARM & UBM Tech Launch Signum

ARM and UBM Tech Launch New Digital Magazine:
ARM, a supplier and architect of digital semiconductor chips, has partnered with UBM Tech to launch the new digital magazine–Signum. The focus of Signum is to combine journalistic content with robust multimedia technology. 

Diversified Business Communications Buys Amazing Charts

Diversified Business Communications Buys Electronic Health Record Provider:
Portland, Maine-based b-to-b media company Diversified Business Communications has acquired Amazing Charts, a provider of electronic health records. The deal is intended to expand Diversified's Pri-Med division and its medical education business. 

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

EURO-GRAPH Reports Oct. Numbers


EURO-GRAPH has reported October European Graphic paper shipments rose +2.4% as compared to the same month last year. Exports increased +5.5% and demand was up +0.9%.

Sappi Cloquet: Union Votes to Authorize Strike

Sappi Fine Paper North America has learned that, in a vote yesterday, the Cloquet Mill employees represented by the United Steelworkers (USW) have authorized their leadership to call a strike if it chooses to do so. "Even though such a vote is not uncommon, and does not mean a strike will occur, we are very disappointed in the membership's action, given our fair and competitive contract package," said Rick Dwyer, Managing Director, Cloquet, Sappi Fine Paper North America.

Catalyst Paper Names Bidder for Snowflake

Catalyst Paper identifies the bidder for its Snowflake mill assets in Arizona.:
Catalyst Paper has accepted a qualified stalking horse bid from MLR Ventures, LLC  as part of the sales process for disposition of the Snowflake facility and Apache Railway.
“We have received a $12.0 million Stalking Horse bid for the assets and land associated with the Snowflake facility and the equity of Apache Railway,” said President and Chief Executive Officer Kevin J. Clarke. “We look forward to beginning the next phase of the sale process and to identifying a qualified buyer in the near term.”

AbitibiBowater Mill Project Dead

A proposal to make pellets at the former AbitibiBowater mill in Grand Falls-Windsor is dead, CBC News has learned.
In May, Natural Resources Minister Jerome Kennedy confirmed that a company was interested in setting up shop at the former mill site.
But the company involved, York Energy, now says the government abruptly cancelled the negotiations and has killed the deal.

Resolute Estimates Fort Frances Idling Costs

Resolute Forest Products’ costs for indefinitely idling kraft mill and paper machine in Fort Frances:
Resolute Forest Products estimates the company will incur a charge of approximately $12 million for severance and other termination benefits, and $5 million in other closure costs resulting from the indefinite idling of the kraft mill and one paper machine in Fort Frances, Ontario.
Total future cash expenditures associated with these items are expected to be approximately $14 million.
Resolute Forest Products also expects to incur approximately $32 million of non-cash asset impairment charges to reduce the carrying value of the assets to their estimated fair value.

NS to Spend $6.3 million to Increase Crown Land

Nova Scotia plans to spend $6.3 million to increase Crown land base:
Nova Scotia is setting aside $6.3 million in its 2013-2014 budget to increase the province’s Crown land base.
Lands purchased will be used to increase coastal access, protect Mi’kmaq values, enhance wildlife conservation, and help the province meet its 12% land protection goal. The $6.3 million dollar investment includes $800 thousand from the Forestry Transition Land Acquisition Program.

Magazine Digital Readership Up 47%

Magazines’ newsstand sales may be struggling, but there’s a bright spot when it comes to digital readership. Today, GfK MRI released its fall 2012 Survey of the American Consumer, which tracks print and digital magazine readership, and found that magazine readership had increased by 1.6 percent (or nearly 20 million people) to 1.2 billion people since last spring. That was helped by a significant bump in digital consumption: Readership of magazines' digital editions jumped 47 percent, or 4.4 million people, to more than 13.5 million.

Time Launches Digital Video Unit

More changes are afoot at Time Inc. following the reshuffling CEO Laura Lang kicked off last summer. Today, in a company-wide memo, Lang announced the launch of a new digital video unit, a recognition that the company's brands need to tap new, potentially lucrative sources of revenue as their traditional print business continues to decline. 
To manage the unit, Lang brought in J.R. McCabe, who was vp, chief video officer at Meredith Corporation.