If you buy today’s edition and look closely, the Peninsula Daily News is a little lighter, brighter and cleaner-looking than it was a few days ago.
And it’s even more local.
The PDN on Thursday started printing all of its daily product on newsprint from the Nippon Paper Industries USA Ltd. paper mill in Port Angeles.
The change — a local newspaper using a locally made product — means that the newspaper is truly home-grown, made entirely on the North Olympic Peninsula.
“Pictures pop out better,” said John Brewer, PDN editor and publisher.
“Ads pop out better. It’s a little stiffer paper than what we had before.
“It reflects the expertise that they’ve been able to bring to knowing how to make a lightweight paper.
“And — very importantly — it is created using less energy, with a low-carbon footprint.
“And they use a lot of recycled stuff, which is important to us, too.”
Nippon specializes in lightweight paper for telephone directories.
It only recently began making newsprint after a 25-year hiatus.
The PDN, which has the only newspaper printing press on the North Olympic Peninsula, is the only newspaper that the Port Angeles paper mill is supplying.
The PDN spends about $500,000 per year on newsprint.
“From a delivery point of view, this is great,” said Harold Norlund, Nippon mill manager.
“You can get warm rolls, so to speak.”
And, Norlund added, “any time you can support local business, it helps your neighbor. There are spin-off impacts.”
The PDN accounts for less than 1 percent of Port Angeles Nippon paper mill’s production, but the local ties are not lost on their leaders.
Wood chips and wood waste, a byproduct of lumbering operations, for the newsprint comes from the Peninsula.
It is manufactured, shipped and produced entirely on the Peninsula.
About 25 percent of the fiber in the PDN comes from recycled newsprint and waste paper.
The rest comes from wood chips and residual wood waste.
Previously, the PDN was printed on 43-gram newsprint from Newberg, Ore.-based SP Recycling Corp.
Nippon’s paper is 40-grams per square meter — the light end for newspaper production and the heavy end of the mill’s “sweet spot,” Norlund said.
Wood chips for the newsprint are supplied by Interfor and shipped by Atlas Trucking.
“A local tie is always a good tie,” Norlund said.
“There’s less resources used in making a paper and selling it locally. I mean, you’re not trucking, you’re not warehousing, you’re not shipping.”
Nippon’s Port Angeles mill has 218 employees and four contractors on site.
The PDN has 103 full-time and part-time employees.
“If I look at local farmers markets, they’re always saying the same thing, which is buy local if you can,” Norlund said.
“And I think you’d be very surprised by the value and the quality that you can get by buying local.”
Atlas hauls recycled paper to the Nippon mill and finished goods out of Port Angeles.
“So the truck’s full both ways,” Norlund said.
“So again, it has a local connection. And Atlas has drivers in town.”
For its part, the PDN was “very interested” in the agreement with Nippon, Brewer said.
Contractual obligations delayed the negotiations, which began about a year ago.
The cost of the lighter newsprint that Nippon makes is equal to the heavier SP Recycling Corp. paper that had been used for five years.
Nippon’s paper was tested on the PDN’s Port Angeles press in a two-day trial last fall.
A water issue caused the paper to initially curl, but the problem was quickly resolved.
“The next batch was perfect,” Brewer said.
“Everybody in the press room was just ecstatic about it.”
Dean Mangiantini, PDN production director, said the lighter newsprint has better opacity and a brighter finish than the old paper.
“We like it better,” Mangiantini said.
“It feels heavier than it is. It feels like it has more body than the old paper.
“We expect to have less trouble with it.”
The PDN orders about 80 700-pound rolls of newsprint every two weeks, Mangiantini said.
Each roll measures 34,000 linear feet — or 6 ½ miles — of paper.
PDN, local churches and groups like the Boy Scouts sell old newspapers to Nippon for recycling.
A high-tech process at the plant breaks down the wood fibers.
Ink comes out of old papers in bubbles that are skimmed from the surface.
“It’s a better engineered paper,” Brewer explained.
“You have people that are professionals at lightweight paper, and that’s what we were looking for.”
Nippon’s agreement with the PDN was sweetened by the fact that the 11- and 22-inch rolls that the paper orders fit perfectly with the machines, cutting waste.
“As it turns out, the trim size on the PDN is absolutely perfect for the paper machines,” Norlund said.
It’s also simple for Nippon to make newsprint and switch back to telephone directory paper.
“We can make small lots, which is important for you and for us both to do,” Norlund said in a conversation with Brewer on Friday.
“We can make small lots — and then we can drop back to [producing] our directory [paper]. That makes it very, very efficient for us.”
Nippon is oversubscribed for telephone directories this year, meaning the 90-year-old plant will be running every week this year.
“That’s the goal for our business and the local economy — to buy wood chips, buy biomass for our boiler, buy old newspapers for our recycling, and then provide a steady product for our customers,” Norlund said.
Nippon exports about 15 percent of its lightweight paper. Most of it goes to Australia and southeast Asia.
Crown Zellerbach, Nippon’s predecessor, opened the mill at the foot of Ediz Hook in December 1920.
It began producing lightweight paper in 1962 — but discontinued making newsprint in the mid-1980s.
Brewer said the PDN would have continued to buy its newsprint locally if Crown Z hadn’t stopped making it.
“We would have never left,” Brewer said.
“The only reason we weren’t using it before is they didn’t make it.”
Nippon’s paper is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification, which means it is produced with a low-carbon footprint and the company takes care of its workers.
“That’s part of cooperate social responsibility,” Norlund said.
“We’re not cutting down trees to make the paper,” Brewer added.
Asked to predict the future of printed news, Brewer said hard copy “is going to continue for quite a long time.”
He said most PDN readers prefer a printed product at their breakfast table to booting up with a computer,
“They want to hold it in their hands,” he said. “They want to be able to clip it, scan the stories easily.
“You can easily absorb literally acres of news in minutes with just your eyeballs.
“There’s nothing cheaper or more portable.
“It allows you to acquire news without having a plug, a telephone line, a cable system; you don’t need batteries, you don’t need an antenna, you don’t need a satellite dish, you don’t need a mouse.
“And it comes to your house before breakfast for just pennies a day.
“And it’s completely recyclable.
“At the same time, we certainly aren’t shorting our Internet friends at all, either.
“We’ve got it both ways,” he added referring to the PDN 24/7 website, www.peninsuladailynews.com.
“But certainly, the vast majority of our readers prefer to get us as a print product,” Brewer said, “and we’ve now improved the print product for them.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
