Sean Milmo, European Editor01.16.19
Growing public awareness in Europe about the environmental dangers of plastic packaging is providing opportunities for paper and board producers to increase their share of the European packaging sector.
However, to take full advantage of these openings, the paper and board supply chain, including inks and coatings producers, needs to become more creative in its use of printing and graphic design in order to compete with the visual appeal of plastic.
The plastics packaging sector has been hit hard on two fronts over the past 12 to 18 months. First, China started to ban worldwide imports of plastic packaging and paper and board waste. The country had been accounting for approximately 40% of global trade in the waste material.
The result was a glut of waste material imports in other Asian countries, which caused prices to plummet, particularly of plastics waste. Some of the plastics were recycled into low-quality products, but large quantities were incinerated for energy recovery or went into landfill.
A far bigger blow for plastics packaging was the screening across the world of a wildlife TV series by UK naturalist Sir David Attenborough, showing film footage of whales, sharks and other ocean creatures being fatally harmed by plastic waste.
The overall image among Europeans is now of a plastics waste disposal system that is not only not working properly but is becoming a major threat to the environment. The paper sector is seen as being more successful in the way it manages to recycle the vast majority of its output.
Less than 30% of plastic waste produced annually in Europe is recycled. By contrast, the European paper sector has a recycling rate of 72%, while 85% of paper and board packaging is recycled.
Paper and board packaging manufacturers are well positioned to compete more effectively against plastics packaging producers because paper and board, especially carton board, has a reputation for sustainability.
“The subject of plastics (waste) has become one of the biggest megatrends in society (so that) the opportunity of positioning carton board against plastic is greater than ever,” Hartwig Kirner, head of the Austrian branch of Fairtrade, the group backing the world’s poorer farmers, told a recent packaging conference.
Over the past few years, output and consumption of corrugated board in Europe have been growing at a rate double the average for all packaging materials, including carton board.
In 2016-17, production of case or corrugated materials went up by 5.1% to more than 29 million metric tons, and consumption by 4.8% to close to 28 million metric tons. The output of carton board rose by 4.7% to nearly 9.5 million metric tons, but consumption increased by 2% to more than 6 million metric tons, according to figures from the Confederation of European Paper Industries (Cepi).
In a reversal of a trend in the paper industry as a whole, the number of corrugated board companies and plants has been going up, although marginally at the moment.
Approximately 4 million tons – equivalent to more than 10% of output – of new corrugated board capacity is due to come on stream in the next two years, according to EUWID, a German-based paper consultancy.
Stora Enso, the leading multinational paper manufacturer, is converting a one million tons a year coated paper facility in Finland to a carton boards unit, is building a corrugated board plant in Latvia and expanding capacity in two corrugated board facilities in Finland and Sweden.
Progroup is becoming Europe’s fastest expanding corrugated board manufacturer. After reaching one million tons of annual capacity in 2017, it has been pressing ahead with the construction of a plant in Ellesmere Port, England, and plans to construct four corrugated plants in Central Europe.
With a lot of new capacity coming on stream across Europe, there are worries about a possible supply/demand imbalance that will soon put downward pressure on corrugated prices. EUWID was reporting signs of a softening of prices for corrugated board in parts of Europe in late 2018.
Meanwhile, board producers, converters, press equipment manufacturers and, particularly, ink and coatings producers have been making efforts to help improve the printing quality on paper packaging.
With corrugated board, the objective has been to increase its printability and versatility so that it can meet the changing needs of the retail and online shopping sectors.
Board producers and converters have been altering substrate properties so that their products offer a wide range of opportunities for more creative graphic designs, particularly to satisfy the requirements of brand owners for visually attractive packaging.
Paper packaging has the benefit of being able to combine visual appeal and simplicity, especially in respect to the number of materials being used.
“Simplicity has been ‘on trend’ for a few years now and it isn’t going to go away anytime soon,” said Kate Hulley, managing director of corrugated packaging producer fopr Belmont Packaging. “However there’s a fine line between standing out in a retail environment and minimalist design. Minimalist but colorful design will have a huge part of play for forward-thinking brands in 2019. Selecting a brand display packaging choice with minimal materials and the maximum effect will be the way to go this year.”
Developing Inks for The Paper and Board Market
A growing number of board converters in Europe are now working out their own specifications for inks and coatings, with many emphasizing a desire for bio-based resins and other raw materials.
At a time when production costs have become increasingly important, ink producers serving the board market are concentrating on the development of products that are stable and reliable during the printing process, enable quick turnarounds and are easy to handle and manage.
The main priority is still to provide inks that ensure high-quality printing, strong colors, printability with UV curing, high-resolution images and rub resistance.
Another requirement is for inks that cater to the rising demand for packaging that responds quickly to market conditions. Printed messages on packs may have to be constantly changed. The ability to print short runs economically is vital.
The need for this flexibility has persuaded converters to invest more in digital presses, a large proportion of which use inkjet inks rather than toners. The inks tend to be water-based because of their greater efficiencies and the increased environmental concerns of consumers.
A problem with waterborne inks, especially with corrugated board packaging, is that they conflict with a preference for UV curing to ensure printing quality. Resolving this difficulty is a challenge for ink makers.
“From our perspective, the most promising technologies are UV and water-based inkjet – the two areas where we already focus our activities today,” explained Markus Kluegge, sales and technology manager for inkjet at Siegwerk, in a recent interview on the Insights section of the German-based ink producer’s website. “Water-based inkjet is the most promising technology introduced for single pass large width printing on flexible and corrugated applications.
“However it’s important that the UV radiation really penetrates the whole ink, which could be difficult when using highly absorbent substrates like corrugated board,” he added. “(With energy-saving LED lamps) it might happen that the entire ink soaks so that the UV radiation can’t reach it anymore. When looking at corrugated board as an example of absorbent materials with porous surfaces, it is a clear application area for water-based and not UV inks.”
One solution is to use primers with water-based inkjet inks on highly absorbent substrates, he added.
Paper and board packaging have an emotional appeal among European consumers because it is regarded as being “natural.” In a recently published study covering seven European countries and commissioned by Pro Carton, the European carton board trade association, consumers were asked which one would they choose if they were offered the same product packaged in plastic and cardboard. Four out of five (81%) said they would choose the cardboard packaging.
This advantage results in government authorities, retailers, brand owners and other packaging customers expecting paper and board packaging to comply with higher quality and safety standards, particularly with food and pharmaceutical products.
At the same time, European governments are imposing higher levies on producers of packaging materials with the aim being that the taxes will help fund recycling plants, within the framework of circular economies in which waste will be reduced to a minimum.
The UK government is the latest in Europe to announce plans for a new levy system, with the more difficult a product and its materials are to recycle, the higher the tax imposed on it.
With paper and board packaging almost certainly attracting a lower levy, it will have a built-in price competitive advantage against plastics packaging. At the same time, the lower tax will give ink suppliers to the paper packaging sector an incentive to ensure their products are sustainable, recoverable and recyclable.
European Editor Sean Milmo is an Essex, UK-based writer specializing in coverage of the chemical industry.
However, to take full advantage of these openings, the paper and board supply chain, including inks and coatings producers, needs to become more creative in its use of printing and graphic design in order to compete with the visual appeal of plastic.
The plastics packaging sector has been hit hard on two fronts over the past 12 to 18 months. First, China started to ban worldwide imports of plastic packaging and paper and board waste. The country had been accounting for approximately 40% of global trade in the waste material.
The result was a glut of waste material imports in other Asian countries, which caused prices to plummet, particularly of plastics waste. Some of the plastics were recycled into low-quality products, but large quantities were incinerated for energy recovery or went into landfill.
A far bigger blow for plastics packaging was the screening across the world of a wildlife TV series by UK naturalist Sir David Attenborough, showing film footage of whales, sharks and other ocean creatures being fatally harmed by plastic waste.
The overall image among Europeans is now of a plastics waste disposal system that is not only not working properly but is becoming a major threat to the environment. The paper sector is seen as being more successful in the way it manages to recycle the vast majority of its output.
Less than 30% of plastic waste produced annually in Europe is recycled. By contrast, the European paper sector has a recycling rate of 72%, while 85% of paper and board packaging is recycled.
Paper and board packaging manufacturers are well positioned to compete more effectively against plastics packaging producers because paper and board, especially carton board, has a reputation for sustainability.
“The subject of plastics (waste) has become one of the biggest megatrends in society (so that) the opportunity of positioning carton board against plastic is greater than ever,” Hartwig Kirner, head of the Austrian branch of Fairtrade, the group backing the world’s poorer farmers, told a recent packaging conference.
Over the past few years, output and consumption of corrugated board in Europe have been growing at a rate double the average for all packaging materials, including carton board.
In 2016-17, production of case or corrugated materials went up by 5.1% to more than 29 million metric tons, and consumption by 4.8% to close to 28 million metric tons. The output of carton board rose by 4.7% to nearly 9.5 million metric tons, but consumption increased by 2% to more than 6 million metric tons, according to figures from the Confederation of European Paper Industries (Cepi).
In a reversal of a trend in the paper industry as a whole, the number of corrugated board companies and plants has been going up, although marginally at the moment.
Approximately 4 million tons – equivalent to more than 10% of output – of new corrugated board capacity is due to come on stream in the next two years, according to EUWID, a German-based paper consultancy.
Stora Enso, the leading multinational paper manufacturer, is converting a one million tons a year coated paper facility in Finland to a carton boards unit, is building a corrugated board plant in Latvia and expanding capacity in two corrugated board facilities in Finland and Sweden.
Progroup is becoming Europe’s fastest expanding corrugated board manufacturer. After reaching one million tons of annual capacity in 2017, it has been pressing ahead with the construction of a plant in Ellesmere Port, England, and plans to construct four corrugated plants in Central Europe.
With a lot of new capacity coming on stream across Europe, there are worries about a possible supply/demand imbalance that will soon put downward pressure on corrugated prices. EUWID was reporting signs of a softening of prices for corrugated board in parts of Europe in late 2018.
Meanwhile, board producers, converters, press equipment manufacturers and, particularly, ink and coatings producers have been making efforts to help improve the printing quality on paper packaging.
With corrugated board, the objective has been to increase its printability and versatility so that it can meet the changing needs of the retail and online shopping sectors.
Board producers and converters have been altering substrate properties so that their products offer a wide range of opportunities for more creative graphic designs, particularly to satisfy the requirements of brand owners for visually attractive packaging.
Paper packaging has the benefit of being able to combine visual appeal and simplicity, especially in respect to the number of materials being used.
“Simplicity has been ‘on trend’ for a few years now and it isn’t going to go away anytime soon,” said Kate Hulley, managing director of corrugated packaging producer fopr Belmont Packaging. “However there’s a fine line between standing out in a retail environment and minimalist design. Minimalist but colorful design will have a huge part of play for forward-thinking brands in 2019. Selecting a brand display packaging choice with minimal materials and the maximum effect will be the way to go this year.”
Developing Inks for The Paper and Board Market
A growing number of board converters in Europe are now working out their own specifications for inks and coatings, with many emphasizing a desire for bio-based resins and other raw materials.
At a time when production costs have become increasingly important, ink producers serving the board market are concentrating on the development of products that are stable and reliable during the printing process, enable quick turnarounds and are easy to handle and manage.
The main priority is still to provide inks that ensure high-quality printing, strong colors, printability with UV curing, high-resolution images and rub resistance.
Another requirement is for inks that cater to the rising demand for packaging that responds quickly to market conditions. Printed messages on packs may have to be constantly changed. The ability to print short runs economically is vital.
The need for this flexibility has persuaded converters to invest more in digital presses, a large proportion of which use inkjet inks rather than toners. The inks tend to be water-based because of their greater efficiencies and the increased environmental concerns of consumers.
A problem with waterborne inks, especially with corrugated board packaging, is that they conflict with a preference for UV curing to ensure printing quality. Resolving this difficulty is a challenge for ink makers.
“From our perspective, the most promising technologies are UV and water-based inkjet – the two areas where we already focus our activities today,” explained Markus Kluegge, sales and technology manager for inkjet at Siegwerk, in a recent interview on the Insights section of the German-based ink producer’s website. “Water-based inkjet is the most promising technology introduced for single pass large width printing on flexible and corrugated applications.
“However it’s important that the UV radiation really penetrates the whole ink, which could be difficult when using highly absorbent substrates like corrugated board,” he added. “(With energy-saving LED lamps) it might happen that the entire ink soaks so that the UV radiation can’t reach it anymore. When looking at corrugated board as an example of absorbent materials with porous surfaces, it is a clear application area for water-based and not UV inks.”
One solution is to use primers with water-based inkjet inks on highly absorbent substrates, he added.
Paper and board packaging have an emotional appeal among European consumers because it is regarded as being “natural.” In a recently published study covering seven European countries and commissioned by Pro Carton, the European carton board trade association, consumers were asked which one would they choose if they were offered the same product packaged in plastic and cardboard. Four out of five (81%) said they would choose the cardboard packaging.
This advantage results in government authorities, retailers, brand owners and other packaging customers expecting paper and board packaging to comply with higher quality and safety standards, particularly with food and pharmaceutical products.
At the same time, European governments are imposing higher levies on producers of packaging materials with the aim being that the taxes will help fund recycling plants, within the framework of circular economies in which waste will be reduced to a minimum.
The UK government is the latest in Europe to announce plans for a new levy system, with the more difficult a product and its materials are to recycle, the higher the tax imposed on it.
With paper and board packaging almost certainly attracting a lower levy, it will have a built-in price competitive advantage against plastics packaging. At the same time, the lower tax will give ink suppliers to the paper packaging sector an incentive to ensure their products are sustainable, recoverable and recyclable.
European Editor Sean Milmo is an Essex, UK-based writer specializing in coverage of the chemical industry.