Corrugated Light Weight Performance Paper
Lighter weighted ‘performance paper' corrugated board is board made with a liner paper weight of no more than 100gsm and fluting of no more than 90gsm and yet still provides the packaging performance characteristics of traditional corrugated board fluting material of 100 to 105gsm even though less fibre is used.
The enhanced performance now possible with light weight material and the cost and environmental benefits are slowly being recognised by buyers and manufacturing teams. UK corrugated board producers are introducing material such as DS Smith's K-Light with 100gsm liners and 90gsm fluting and Smithpack's design team are keen to help customers review their specifications with the new materials in mind.
Adoption of the new material however is dependant upon a willingness for product specifiers and retailers to specify by performance rather than traditional corrugated case material CCM grades. Retail Ready Packaging is an area where the environmental benefits of light weight packaging have strong appeal and prominent retailers such a Tesco (have widely expressed willingness to support such initatives so the opportunity is clearly there. Tesco's packaging technical manager Stephen Pizer is qouted as recently saying "We will specify what the packaging needs to do. I think where we'd like to go is actually specifying corrugated packaging with the performance we need rather than specifying a particular board." (Packaging News 2/12/09)