Myllykoski Summit: Economic upheaval provides opportunities
"Paper – The King of Media", which was the theme of the Summit, which noted that the economic upheaval provides opportunities for the paper industry. The global paper market has managed to recover after the decline of 2009 and is now returning to the levels of previous average years. On the profit side, however, it is a completely different story. The prices of some raw materials have multiplied greatly in recent years, but the price of paper is currently at the same level as it was in the 80s. This will need to be adjusted, the Summit concluded.Hanna Pihkola from the VTT Techni¬cal Research Centre of Finland headed the line-up of international speakers. She spoke about the ecological equilibrium in the print media and disproved the general opinion that print is environmentally suboptimal. One example: the production of a single magazine produces the same amount of CO2 as a 1.5-kilometer car journey.Jacek Utko from Bonnier Business Press demonstrated clearly in his talk “How design can save print media” that these days’ print products will only be successful, if they conform to the formula of strategy content design, but also that business models are ultimately what count, not the product. Well-known media expert Jo Groebel of the German Digital Institute showed just how difficult it is to make prognoses in the media industry. He summed up by saying that the sector should be confident enough to want to and be able to accept the challenges in order to continuously develop new ideas and implement them consistently.