M-real showed sweet packaging future

01 Feb 2012

M-real Paperboard, Europe’s leading supplier of fresh forest fibre cartonboards, showed its grades especially designed for confectionery at ProSweets.

M-real Paperboard, Europe’s leading supplier of fresh forest fibre cartonboards, showed its grades especially designed for confectionery at ProSweets. Carta Solida and Simcote are pure, lightweight and sustainable cartonboards with sensory properties that meet industry standards. Carta Solida is especially suitable for direct contact with chocolate and its high brightness and smoothness result in excellent printability; Simcote is noted for its light weight combined with strength, making it a good choice for a wide spectrum of confectionery and food cartons.

M-real described its recent investment programme aimed at providing better service to customers and endorsing its commitment to the industry. It has rebuilt its machinery to allow for higher standards and to increase cartonboard capacity, leading to shorter lead times and better availability. M-real is also investing in biopower, with the aim of replacing fossil natural gas with discarded wood as fuel wherever possible.

The sustainability of cartonboard packaging is increasingly appreciated by consumers, and M-real uses only fresh forest fibres from certified Nordic forests in its products. M-real can trace the origin of all its fibres and other raw materials, and knows that they are free from contaminants, making its boards highly suitable for confectionery and food packaging where safety is paramount.

Fresh forest fibres allow M-real to produce boards that are both lightweight and strong. This makes them highly suitable for creative ideas as they can be embossed, die cut and folded into special carton constructions without compromise on carton rigidity. By light weighting, M-real’s boards offer the same properties of stiffness and bulk as heavier conventional grades but in lower substances, which means they can be specified for confectionery packaging without losing a quality feel.

Using a lightweight board also has environmental benefits, as less energy is consumed in production and transit, and less waste needs to be disposed of at the end of a carton’s life. Reducing the weight of a board lowers its carbon footprint at least in proportion to its basis weight. A 15% reduction in board weight equates to a 18% reduction in carbon footprint, which is important to users concerned about sustainability. If they can specify a lighter weight board, provided all criteria regarding stiffness and performance are met, their own carbon footprint will diminish accordingly. In addition, M-real can provide individual product-orientated carbon footprint calculations for its customers.

Source: M-real Paperboard