I just talked to one of our envelope manufactures and they are a minimum 8 weeks out if not in stock. In her 40 years with the company she has never seen it like this. She thought the end of the first quarter was going to be better, but after last week she doesn't see an end in sight.
It really depends on what you need. Forget about most envelopes, and there are several relatively common stocks that I can’t get at any price.
We've been struggling to get any 70lb paper in any brand but envelopes haven't been an issue yet.
My experience is that it's getting more difficult to find any paper that would work for the jobs I have. It's an ongoing task to search through alternatives, but they are thinning out dramatically.
Yes it’ll get worse before it gets better. I am being told 60-90 days on our most common items. I am lucky to only have one printer to feed, greater financial and space flexibility than other small printers may have because printing isn’t all we do, but in the past few months I have had to resort to buying a lot more paper than normal in order to be sure I have something for orders that are scheduled for the following quarter. In normal times I would prefer not to have more than a couple months of inventory for storage and financial reasons, but we can agree these are not normal times.
True
Some of the big guys probably get the same size allocation from the mills as the paper vendors do.
Same boat. We literally have a big order we can't fulfill because there's no 14pt available or coming. This is crazy. We log in to check paper inventory constantly and there's nothing. If there is, it's gone in seconds. Also, the big guys are hoarding and getting first dibs, doesn't help us little guys much..
 The Video You Really Need To Watch Modern offset press performance comes with several nuances. Chris Travis, Director of Technology at Koenig & Bauer, shares some details. View The Video |
