Iiro Koria, Senior Researcher, Fisher International
We tend to know our customers far better than we really know our competition, whether directly or indirectly. Understanding direct and indirect competition will help us better understand the customers by helping us address unserved needs, thus allowing us to better serve the market. Understanding the implications of the physical locations in comparison to the market can provide producers and suppliers insights to inform their sales and marketing initiatives.
The geographical location of the mill is perhaps less important to bulky mass products such as pulp, newsprint and other paper products as these are shipped in larger quantities, which offsets the costs of distribution. The advances made in logistical solutions throughout the years have brought costs effective ways to operate in markets which are relatively speaking far away.
However, the impact of the physical location of the producing paper mill can be significant when looking at commodity products such as graphical printing and writing papers when there has been an oversupply for a long time and market pricing has been under pressure providing low profit margins to the producers. Specialty paper producers and packaging papers usually fall someplace in between these two.
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