News publishers’ digital challenges are legion, but a more conventional problem has come into sharp focus this year: the price of paper.

In its half-year results released in July, publishing giant Reach reported a 65% year-on-year increase in its newsprint costs – up £13.6m.

Gannett, the US publisher that owns USA Today and, in the UK, local newspaper chains Newsquest and Archant, in August estimated it had taken a year-on-year hit in the second quarter of $23m (£20.4m) from inflation in newsprint and fuel prices.

Paper price increases this year can be attributed to the invasion of Ukraine, the weakening pound and the onward march of Amazon.

With all the mill closures and more potentially on the horizon, it is unclear when prices will settle. The industry source said: “The camel’s back is creaking.”

For now, publishers have a few options to try to get above the rising waterline: they can reduce their paper grade, sacrificing thickness and texture. They can reduce their print volumes and pagination (the number of pages within a paper) – Reach, for example, has dropped each by about 5%.

And as many publishers including Reach have, print news publishers can pass the cost pressures onto consumers. That would be unattractive to most companies – but even that option isn’t available to all publishers, with freesheets particularly vulnerable.