The Health Of Printing, Paper And Packaging

According to the CCN Group's (tel:0115 941 0888) latest Corporate Health Check of the UK's largest companies, the printing, paper and packaging industry has suffered a sharp reversal in its fortunes as output has declined further despite the benefits of falling input prices for its raw materials over the last year. The return on capital employed, having achieved successive improvements over a period of 2 or 3 years, has fallen back to 12.9% compared with 14.6% in the previous quarter, bringing the industry closer to the national average of 12.1%. The pre-tax margins on sales has followed this trend, suffering the second highest fall of all the sectors, to come down from 7.2% to 6.2%, below the national average of 7.8%. (whole item)