Graphic Paper

FORT MILL, SC, Sept. 15, 2020 (Press Release) -Over the last two years, Domtar has evaluated the merits of repurposing key paper machines as we adjust our white paper production capacity to match our customer demand. That’s why we recently announced we are converting our Kingsport, Tennessee, paper mill into the company’s first containerboard facility.

Similar to previous decisions that have adapted our mills, like the 2016 conversion at our Ashdown Mill to produce fluff pulp, containerboard manufacturing is an exciting new market that directly aligns with our expertise and more than 100-year legacy of turning fiber into useful products. We’re excited about this move, and here are a few reasons you should be too:

Containerboard Is Versatile and Sustainable

Containerboard is a type of paper used to make cardboard. If you’re looking at a cross-section of cardboard, you’ll notice the corrugated medium between two sheets of linerboard paper.

Containerboard is widely used as a packaging material because it is versatile, lightweight, strong and renewable. It supports a variety of industries, including food products, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing and distribution, and it aligns with many of today’s megatrends, including growth in e-commerce and sustainability.

Containerboard Is a Large and Growing Market

Containerboard is North America’s largest pulp and paper market, and it has good long-term growth prospects. It’s a 40-million-ton market today, and it’s growing by about 2 percent (or approximately 800,000 tons) each year.

Once the Kingsport Mill conversion is complete, which we expect will be in the first quarter of 2023, we’ll be able to produce and market about 600,000 tons of high-quality recycled linerboard and corrugated medium annually on North America’s premier lightweight containerboard machine. That level of capacity will make Kingsport the second-largest recycled containerboard mill in North America.

Kingsport Is an Ideal Location

Producing recycled containerboard requires a good supply stream of recycled paper materials like boxes, chipboard, office paper and newsprint. Finding that material won’t be a problem. We can source it from 72 recovered-paper suppliers with 116 locations in a seven-state radius.

Thanks to a high-quality paper machine capable of producing about 4,500 feet per minute, Kingsport Mill has the potential to become one of the lowest-cost recycled containerboard mills in the United States. Its central location in the Southeastern United States means it’s also geographically positioned to be the go-to supplier to more than 60 independent box makers across the region, representing nearly 4 million tons of annual containerboard demand.

“Repurposing the Kingsport Mill provides Domtar with an excellent strategic entry point into a growing market with a very competitive, low-cost asset,” says Domtar President and CEO John Williams. “We view this as a strategic first step toward building a large value-adding business in the containerboard market.”

We’re Still Committed to Paper

Our entry into the containerboard market doesn’t mean we have plans to stop making paper. Our uncoated freesheet business is a critical part of our financial success, and we’re committed to maintaining our long-standing position as North America’s leading uncoated freesheet producer. Repurposing Kingsport Mill is an important part of our long-term strategic plan to build a large and cost-competitive containerboard business while balancing our uncoated freesheet capacity with customer demand.

The conversion represents an exciting next step in Kingsport Mill’s more than 100-year history in the Northeast Tennessee community.

“We’re proud of our long history in Kingsport and strong partnership with the community,” says Kingsport Mill Manager Marty Barfield. “The mill has an outstanding reputation for employing local talent and giving back. We’ve had many generations of families working here, and we look forward to continuing that tradition for many years to come. We are very excited about developing a new focus and culture once our transformation is complete.”

RADEBEUL, Germany , Sept. 15, 2020 (Press Release) -
• Eight-colour perfector press with coater and reel-to-sheet feeder
• 20,000 sph in perfecting mode is a clear competitive advantage
• Substrate flexibility from lightweight papers to board production
• Spotlight on digital processes

The printing and publishing house Bonifatius in Paderborn recently ordered a new Rapida 106 X. Its installation is scheduled for early 2021. By investing in this highly automated eight-colour perfector press for 4-over-4 production with additional inline coating, the company has doubled down on its commitment to the medium of print, even in these currently troubled times. Moreover, it is one of the first printing houses in Germany to opt for the new Rapida generation, which was only recently unveiled at the virtual trade fair “Koenig & Bauer Live”.

Bonifatius makes regular investments in new production equipment. In the past years, a new hall was added to the production complex which today houses a very highly automated 16-page web press. In the meantime, it has also been joined by new post-press machinery. The trend towards ever shorter runs calls for constant optimisation of the way production is structured. The new eight-colour press gives the company the option of printing covers with a high-quality finish in a single pass. Reaching speeds of up to 20,000 sheets per hour, and this in perfecting mode as well, the press is also able to deliver the content for short-run products more economically than its webfed counterpart. This means less waste, faster makeready and greater flexibility in the handling the large number of product variants. The RS 106 reel-to-sheet feeder system allows the same types of paper to be printed on both the sheetfed and webfed presses.

Replacement investment with added punch

There were many reasons for the purchase of the Rapida 106 X: After six years of production, the time had come to consider replacing the Rapida 106 that had been used to date. After weighing up different offers and testing the latest technology, the specialists from Bonifatius were impressed by the Rapida 106 X that they went to see at Krüger Druck und Verlag in Merzig. The commanding level of automation and the high production speeds of the new Rapida generation in perfecting mode represent a clear competitive advantage when compared to the other possible alternatives. Moreover, the production chain at Bonifatius is already configured for the use of the Rapida technology. The operating concept for the new series has undergone significant modernisation, yet many elements nevertheless remain familiar to the printers. That will make the transition even easier.

Managing director Tobias Siepelmeyer and his team particularly value the extremely fast makeready on the Rapida 106 X, not to mention its high production speeds, the fast-reacting inking units, the sidelay-free infeed with DriveTronic SIS, the fully redesigned delivery, the inline colour control system which requires only 3 mm high colour bars, and the fact that the plates no longer have to be bent before mounting. Further praise is given to the quality of service assistance from the company Steuber, which provides local support for users of sheetfed offset presses from Koenig & Bauer in the North Rhine-Westphalia region. The media house has enjoyed a collegial relationship with Steuber over many decades.

Other outstanding features of the Rapida 106 X are remote-controlled plate stretching using the console (paper stretch compensation), the VariDry^BlueIR/hot-air drying systems, simultaneous plate changing using DriveTronic SPC, and the CleanTronic Synchro washing systems that enable parallel washing processes.

In addition to commercial printing, there are also plans to use the new Rapida 106 X for packaging production. This is why it has been configured with both lightweight and board-handling accessories. The presses currently in use are already printing regular packaging jobs today – including food packaging on substrates up to 600 g/m2. The Rapida 106 X, however, will also ensure that there are sufficient units available for spot colours and coatings.

Digital and environment-oriented

The year 2020 has directed a spotlight on digital processes at Bonifatius. In the print section, the new MIS PrintPlus has replaced an analogue production planning system and allows for direct networking with the printing presses. The Rapida 106 X itself incorporates a number of digital solutions ranging from autonomous printing and the LogoTronic Cockpit with displays of performance indicators to a maintenance manager and additional smart services. The company uses smart software to prepare the content for cross-media output and publishes attractive digital content on the Internet in addition to its printed editions.

Even so, the specialists at Bonifatius are firm believers in the printed product. “It still earns its place in the communication mix,” says Tobias Siepelmeyer, whose conviction is founded not least on experience with his own book and magazine publishing house. Text books and leisure magazines are segments which are continuing to grow. Some 50 per cent of the publisher's products are sold through bookshops, including shops owned by the company itself. Another trend that Bonifatius has recently identified is seeing advertisers beginning to turn their backs on social media. The increasing prices for online ads is one of the reasons for this.

Bonifatius is fully committed to ecological print production. Digital job data increase the efficiency of both makeready and production. Materials consumption, energy input and transport processes can be optimised. That saves natural resources and helps the company to achieve the environmental targets it has set itself. Bonifatius has eliminated industrial alcohol from its production process, and the publishing house, print centre, bookshops and media offices all use green electricity. The environmental management system is certified in accordance with FSC, PEFC and EMAS standards, as well as ISO 9001 and 14001. Bonifatius offers its customers climate-neutral printing (Climate Partner) and is entitled to use the “Blue Angel” ecolabel. A detailed environmental statement provides information on the company’s ecology goals and reports on the results achieved to date.

LUXEMBOURG, Sept. 3, 2020 (Press Release) -A commitment to demonstrating robust ethical management is at the heart of an innovative Sustainable Supply Model implemented by Flint Group Packaging Inks, one of the largest ink suppliers to the global print and packaging industry.

In a new white paper unveiled by the company, an ambition to achieve transparent and sustainable supply conditions for the print and packaging supply chain is outlined.

Arno de Groot, Vice President of Procurement for Flint Group Packaging, said: “We have a strong sustainability vision embedded in everything we do at Flint Group Packaging Inks. However, this can only be truly realised if we extend our commitments to our stakeholders and suppliers located around the world. The rigorous standards we set ourselves should also be applicable to those with whom we partner, so that our supply chain is transparent and aligned in achieving sustainable business practices and processes.

“Our Sustainable Supply Model is built on the principles of strong ethical management and, within our Packaging Inks business, we have aligned our strategies and operations to that of the United Nations (UN) Global Compact in relation to management of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption. The Sustainable Supply Model complements the objectives set within the Compact and is intended to extend our approach to sustainability and ethical responsibility across our supply chain.”

The recently published white paper explores four key initiatives that have been developed as part of the Sustainable Supply Model. These include: a Supplier Selection Process, which sees potential new suppliers undergo checks and financial assessment to ensure appropriate trading capability is in place; a Sustainability Performance Assessment to compare supplier performance against 10 UN Global Compact principles and some of its sustainable development goals; a Health Safety & Environment Review to assess delivery processes and compliance to local and international packaging and labelling legislation; and a Quality and Regulatory Assessment, which considers compliance with regulatory requirements according to product, service, market and geography.

Potential suppliers are provided with a score and if all parts of the Sustainable Supply Model have been effectively addressed, can begin working with Flint Group Packaging Inks.

About Flint Group

Flint Group is dedicated to serving the global printing and packaging industry. The company develops, manufactures and markets an extensive portfolio of printing consumables and printing equipment, including a vast range of conventional and energy curable inks and coatings for most offset, flexographic and gravure applications; pressroom chemicals, printing blankets and sleeves for offset printing; photopolymer printing plates and sleeves, plate-making equipment and flexographic sleeve systems; pigments and additives for use in inks and other colourant applications; Flint Group also designs, develops and delivers web-fed digital colour presses for labels and packaging applications, document printing, as well as commercial printing as well as platemaking equipment for the newspaper industry and computer-to-plate (CtP) solutions for the commercial printing market; With a strong customer focus, unmatched service and support, and superior products, Flint Group strives to provide exceptional value, consistent quality and continuous innovation to customers around the world. Headquartered in Luxembourg, Flint Group employs some 6800 people. Revenues for 2019 were € 2 billion. On a worldwide basis, the company is the number one or number two supplier in every major market segment it serves.