The B.C. election is going green, using ballots printed on paper produced without trees, a sign of the rising prominence of environmentally friendly paper in the province.
Social Print Paper is using wheat and sugar cane byproducts to create its paper, which includes the 2017 B.C. election ballots.
Lee and Alan Gieschen and Minto Roy started the New Westminister company in 2011. They have done work with the David Suzuki Foundation, the University of British Columbia and the federal government.
Social Print Paper is an affiliate of Royal Printers, a family-owned commercial printing business founded in 1932 by the Gieschens’ grandfather. The company, which ranks No. 10 on Business in Vancouver’s list of Metro Vancouver’s biggest commercial printers (see page 26) had revenue of $6 million in 2016.
The company’s Wheat Sheet paper is manufactured in India. When Social Print Paper started working with the federal government, officials asked when that paper would be produced in Canada.
Roy, senior partner and co-founder of the company, answered with another question:
“‘Is that your question, or is your question when is our paper going to be made in Canada at the same competitive price it is now?’”
Roy highlighted the importance of offering the company’s agricultural fibre paper without charging an environmental sustainability premium.
Social Print Paper lowered its costs by working with its supply chain partners and by investing in vertical integration.
Most printers have to buy their paper from a supplier. However, because Social Print Paper produces its own paper from sugar cane and wheat, it can reduce input costs by co-ordinating long-term planning and investment with mills and other supply chain partners.
“We have to be competitively priced,” Roy said. “There are so many products out there that are more sustainable, but the consumer market is challenged to pay 20% to 40% more on a product that will hurt the bottom line.”
Roy and his partners are hoping for a future in which wood is no longer used in paper production. Roy said agricultural fibre is a far more environmentally sustainable raw material for paper production because wheat is replenished every year, but a tree takes decades to grow.
But Kevin Mason, managing director of ERA Forest Products Research and a paper and forest products analyst, said agricultural fibre paper is not currently a candidate for mass production.
“It’s very much a niche market and is likely to stay that way until they can compete on that price and quality component.”
Roy said Social Print Paper is starting to show up on the traditional paper industry’s radar – a step toward the buy-in needed to help develop the subsector.
He added that increased consumer education will help encourage larger paper and printing companies to start using wood-free paper.
However, Roy said the company has received some industry pushback and been questioned about social responsibility over labour practices on sugar cane plantations in countries such as the Dominican Republic.
