We are hearing from our newsprint suppliers that the tipping point is close on 27.7# or 45 gsm newsprint becoming the primary newsprint weight. One supplier, Alberta, has announced that they will no longer be producing 30# newsprint as of August 2008. The majority of newspapers have converted to 27.7# due to shortages of 30#. We are even hearing about 43 gram newsprint being tested at some newspapers.
At Color Web Printers we will be transitioning some of our own products this month to 27.7# and sharing the results with our customers. Suppliers are representing a slight pricing gain as a marketing aspect, we’re not certain of those claims at this point. There are the issues of opacity and runnability. We feel we will be able to deal with the product effectively as we gain experience in running it, we will also be looking at any design specifications (ink densities, etc.) as we test.
