Newsprint Makers Write to PM Modi Over Coal Shortage as Nepa's Nepanagar Mill Halts Output

The Indian Newsprint Manufacturers Association (INMA) has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking more coal for newsprint mills, saying power plants receive more than 95% of supplies, Storyboard18 reported on 20 October 2026, citing CNBC-TV18. The appeal comes as state-owned Nepa Limited's mill at Nepanagar in Madhya Pradesh has stopped producing newsprint because it ran out of coal, the Free Press Journal reported.

INMA's members supply newsprint to dailies including The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Hindu, Navbharat Times and Punjab Kesari, according to the report. For publishers, domestic mills are a hedge against imported newsprint, whose prices and freight costs they do not control.

What the mills are asking for

According to the Storyboard18 report, the association:

• said its members are struggling to get coal from public sector mining companies by rail and road under their fuel supply agreements;
• said some are buying coal on the open market at much higher prices, and some are running on grid electricity, which costs substantially more;
• asked the government to implement a distribution policy recommended by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs that would allot 75% of coal to the power sector and 25% to non-power users.

PressRoom has not seen the letter, and the reports do not give its date. There was no public response from the Prime Minister's Office or the Coal Ministry in the reports cited.

A mill that has already stopped

At Nepanagar, both of Nepa's paper machines, with a combined capacity of 1 lakh tonnes of newsprint a year, are in working order, but production has been suspended for lack of coal, a Nepa spokesperson told the Free Press Journal in a report updated on 18 October. The mill had restarted after a decade-long shutdown from 2012 to 2022 and ran continuously for a month before stopping, the paper said. Management is in talks with South Eastern Coalfields, Western Coalfields and the Coal Ministry for supplies.

Nepa is also seeking ₹674 crore of relief from the Centre: a waiver of a ₹247 crore government loan and ₹427 crore of accrued interest, according to the Free Press Journal, which put the company's accumulated losses at about ₹1,055 crore.

Why it matters for print

India imports roughly 60% of its newsprint, the Free Press Journal reported. Print groups are counting on the festive quarter for ad revenue, as DB Corp signalled last week, and print remains a large part of the media and entertainment sector's revenue. Any rise in paper costs during that window would land on publishers' margins. The pressure is wider than newsprint: Storyboard18 cited power-sector data showing 81 of 176 plants that use domestic coal had critical stocks as of 5 October.