Your Packaging is Changing (Whether you want it to or not)

The packaging industry is in the midst of an unprecedented period of turmoil and change. The weight, performance, fiber content and cost of paper is undergoing a radical change. The advent of new technologies and unprecedented consolidation has fundamentally changed the markets for liner board and finished boxes. Worldwide demand for fiber has significantly altered the raw material inputs for the paper industry and is transforming the way packaging performs. The cost of liner board increased $50.00/ton last year and will continue to rise. 

The paper content of your corrugated packaging is changing, and it is getting harder to know just what these changes mean for the price and performance of your packaging. We are increasingly encountering new customers that describe performance issues that seem to appear “out of the blue”. Why is this happening? The simple fact is the amount of fiber in liner board has already changed, and these changes are subtle and difficult to quantify. The chart below describes the changes. These lighter liners are already in the market. 

The paper producers claim that these liners perform as well or even better because the technology used to produce the liner has improved. This may be true. Our internal testing regime has produced mixed results. The fact that corrugated sheets will perform at ECT32 off a corrugator does not mean those same sheets will deliver the same performance as the heavier ECT32 sheets we are used to running. The process of converting sheets to finished packaging impacts performance characteristics. This puts pressure on the box maker to have effective tools to measure the performance of the packaging we produce. It also forces us to carefully evaluate the performance of sheets from different suppliers, because each supplier is doing different things to get their performance up and they are not sharing these secrets. Some mills produce better paper than others.

Consequently we have invested in new testing equipment to augment our current testing program. We have to. The variety of liner board and paper combinations we encounter when working with new clients is impossible to evaluate without careful testing. Buyer beware. ECT32 is not the same old ECT32 you are used to, it could be better, but it may worse. It all depends on how you are using it.