MONTREAL, QUEBEC,—  North American printing and writing mills operated at 77% of their capacity, with August inventory level at 848,000 tons, or 15% higher year-over-year, according to the Pulp and Paper Products Council (PPPC). Last year, the mill operating rate for the January-August period was 96% as customers were still in a post-pandemic panic-buying mode and bought much more paper than what they needed, building a lot of inventory. They estimates that printing and writing paper inventories at customers increased about 1.98 million tonnes in 2021 and 2022 (485,000 tonnes in 2021 and 1.54 million tonnes in 2022) and that over half of these stocks were worked down during the first half of 2023. While most paper merchants and some printers have already worked through most of their inventories and started to order paper again, some are still overstocked. Also, they no longer want to build as much inventory as they used to in the past.