Wow! > "Zhenyong Liu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Orient Paper, commented, "Our third quarter results continued to be impacted by the government mandated restriction on production. In addition, our production was suspended in September 2017 during the replacement of all of our coal burning boilers with gas boilers in compliance with the latest government regulations. Total sales volume decreased by 36.2% to 61,903 tonnes, leading to a 10.6% decrease in total revenue in the third quarter. Gross margin improved as a result of increase in ASPs for regular CMP and light-weight CMP. Looking ahead, as the government continues to promulgate and fully implement rules and regulations on environmental protections, outdated productions in paper industry are accelerating to phase out, we believe large-scale enterprises like us will benefit from industry consolidation as a result of the phasing out of outdated productions for a long-term sustainable development. We expect the overall price and market demand will show an upward trend in the near future and the Company's operations will continue to improve."
Third Quarter 2017 Financial Results
Revenue
For the third quarter of 2017, total revenue decreased by $4.0 million, or 10.6%, to $33.5 million from $37.5 million for the same period of last year. The decrease in total revenue was mainly due to decreases in sales volume across all product categories and partially offset by increase in blended ASP. The restrictions on our production volume by the Chinese government remained in place during the quarter. Additionally, our production was interrupted in September 2017 as we removed all coal burning boilers and started to replace them with gas boilers in compliance with the latest government regulation. Production was suspended during the replacement of boilers. As a result, the production volume of regular CMP, light-Weight CMP and offset printing paper in the third quarter of 2017 declined and sales of these products decreased accordingly. The following table summarizes revenue, volume and ASP by product for the third quarter of 2017 and 2016, respectively:
For the Three Months Ended September 30,
2017 2016
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