Material

One particularly relevant factor in the area of materials is the use of paper, printing plates and inks for newspaper printing. The amount of paper used depends on the size of the newspaper, the external orders placed and the circulation of the printed titles (in terms of the GHG carbon footprint, it is the paper that is purchased that is relevant, not the products produced). 2021 and 2022 saw supply bottlenecks and uncertainties in the area of paper production. Paper stocks in the printing centres were boosted in order to be prepared for possible shortages. This is one of the reasons why an increase in the amount of paper was recorded compared to the previous year. As already mentioned, there was also an increase in third-party printing orders. 57% of the paper is used for third-party print jobs, i.e. for printing Ringier, NZZ and CH Media titles, for example (compared to 54% in the previous year). For information on the producers of paper as well as the delivery and the composition of the paper, see the chapter Supply chain (page 14 to 16). Both the paper manufacturers and TX Group printing centres are aware of the environmental impact of paper production. For this reason, the industry is committed to ensuring that the proportion of recycled paper used in production is as high as possible and that raw materials, primarily wood, comes from sustainably managed forests. Paper waste generated in the production process is collected directly and sent by rail to the Swiss producer Perlen AG in Perlen (LU), enabling it to be reprocessed into new paper. For technical reasons, the aluminium printing plates required for the printing process can only be used in the printing process once. However, the aluminium itself can be reused for other purposes outside newspaper production. For this reason, used printing plates are fully resold after use in the printing centres.