2 minute read
What is folding box board anyway?
Papermaker ZALMAN HORSBURGH at work checking cardboard quality to ensure it meets customer requirements.
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Fitter GLEN FERGUSON and mechanical apprentice MORGANA GRAY at work on a lathe in the mill’s maintenance workshop.
Folding box board:
What is it exactly?
THINK of the cardboard container your six-pack of beer came in, or the McDonald’s Happy Meal box, and the chances are that they could well be created from specialised products created in Whakatāne at the Whakatāne Mill.
Collectively they are called folding box board, with properties including strength and rigidity, and capable of holding food items, such as chips and burgers.
The mill produces three types of folding box board:
Food service board, which is grease-resistant and capable of having direct contact with food – the Maccas meal box, KFC packs and many more uses.
Carrier board packaging that takes two forms. The fi rst is a cardboard container that typically would carry packs of beer bottles that need to be refrigerated. The board needs to have certain properties so that when it comes out of the refrigerator and condensation forms it doesn’t disintegrate. If you cast your mind back a few years when you bought a six-pack or a crate of beer the bottles in the tray would be wrapped in plastic. Today it’s in a fi bre-based carrier.
The second carrier board product is manufactured for nonrefrigerated items such as in supermarket display shelves where you get packs of tonic or sauce bottles. Typically they are non-refrigerated. These are referred to as CUK or coated unbleached kraft.
On the WML order book you would fi nd that they are producing one-third food service board, one-third carrier board and one-third CUK.
Folding box board is environmentally friendly to produce; it is helping remove the world’s reliance on plastics for packaging, and its special coatings make it an ideal stock for printing. The board is also recyclable.
Large reels of the fi nished product leave the mill, destined for “converter” companies where die cutting and printing is carried out to create the fi nal shape and design for its end use.
The Whakatāne Mill produces about 150,000 tonnes of these products each year.
The milI is the only producer of folding box board in New Zealand or Australia, which gives it a unique advantage.
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Wm Ross Engineering Ltd
INCORPORATING BOP Gear Cutters Ltd
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