NOR Paper, a division of Bytes Document Solutions, has expanded into the Pretoria region.
Nor Paper Company, which already contributes in excess of R280 million annually to Bytes Document Solutions' revenue, will leverage its parent company's recently opened Pretoria branch in Hatfield.
“This is an important step in further expanding our business,” says Raymond Blake, divisional manager of NOR Paper. “We already service a number of government departments and printers in the region, but we aim to aggressively tackle the greater market through a local footprint in line with our vision to become Africa's most successful and dependable paper partner in the next five years.”
NOR Paper recently achieved a Level Three Value Added Supplier rating from Empowerdex, an accredited BBBEE ratings agency, through parent company Bytes Document Solutions. This rating allows customers to claim 137.5% of their spend with the company towards their BBBEE status.
“Office papers and papers used in commercial printers and graphic arts represent R630 million of our annual turnover and that figure is set to grow on the back of the global trend toward increased paper use,” says Rob Abraham, MD of Bytes Document Solutions. “There are 15.2 trillion pages printed worldwide every year, according to Lyra Research, with most enterprises spending between 3% and 5% of their annual revenue on documents. The number has more than trebled in the past 30 years, paper consumption has increased by a factor of 20 this century, and the amount is expected to double by 2020. This is not a new industry. It's mature and it's still growing.”
Bytes Document Solutions acquired NOR Paper in 2008. The paper specialist, founded in Cape Town in 1974, expanded into Gauteng by opening a Johannesburg office in 2005.
The company recently began operating an additional warehouse to support both the Johannesburg and Pretoria operations.
“We acquired an additional 10 500m^2 warehouse in Denver, bringing the total, including our facility in Cape Town, to 18 000m^2,” says Blake.
“It is important in our market to retain adequate stock and bring it to customers in a just-in-time environment.
“The industry has matured to the point where printers no longer keep stock because it requires too much capital outlay as well as ongoing overheads,” he says.
NOR Paper operates a fleet of 68 delivery vehicles and delivers stock twice daily to customers, with additional deliveries as required. It has dedicated account managers to satisfy customer service requirements, employs modern track-and-trace technologies, and operates against individual service level agreements with customers.
It offers a wide variety of products, including three coated grades, one local and two international, which offer particularly competitive pricing, with triple and double coated grades; bond and cartridge, both local and imported; litho board; carbonless sheets and reels; packaging board including SBS, Greychip, White Lined and Black Lined; ivory board for business cards and folders; and self-adhesive stock.
“We focus on printers and their immediate needs,” says Blake. “We have all the stock they use and we use the best available quality papers from mills around the world and in South Africa.”
NOR Paper sources 70% of its paper from suppliers abroad and the remaining 30% locally, figures that Blake says will shift increasingly in favour of local mills.
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