Newsprint Mills in Australia: a story of shifting optimum location

The focus in this paper is on the shifting optimum location for a newsprint mill in Australia, factors influencing this shift, and the implications for a particular manufacturing site that is becoming increasingly outdated and out-of-place. Shipping times and schedules for high-volume, high-density tonnages of commodities such as newsprint have altered insufficiently over the last 60 years to affect competitive relations among various newsprint manufacturers around the world. With sea transport held roughly constant, changes in other aspects of the international newsprint industry can be investigated as part of unpacking the concept of globalisation. Globalisation for the former Australian Newsprint Mills Ltd meant becoming more open to new and closer competition, as well as becoming more exposed to acquisition by increasingly transnational enterprises. In the global newsprint industry at least, the world is less a smaller place than a more open one, with tonnes of newsprint moving at similar speeds to 60 years ago but among different and changing locations in terms of geography, ownership and market preference.