Iggesund Paperboard, Sweden, reports that this autumn it is upgrading its folding box board Incada. The board will be whiter and lighter and also have a number of improved properties affecting printability. Incada Exel, which is more of a specialized packaging board, will also have improved stiffness, with a gain of up to 10% to 15% for grammages over 300 gsm.

"This enables our customers to reduce their packaging weights while keeping the same protection for the contents," explains Guy Mallinson, head of Iggesund's European sales.

The improved stiffness has also led to a revision of Incada Exel's grammage range to better suit the demands of the current customer base. Other distinct improvements have been made to the odor and taste properties so that Incada now comes in under the Robinson test's detection limit of 0.6. The whiteness improvement amounts to 7.5 units on the CIE scale and most of it lies in the L value, which is critical for color reproduction. Runnability is also improved so that Incada can function even better in customers' processes.

"Incada was introduced in 2001 and since then we've made many small quality improvements," Mallinson says. "This is a big leap forward and will definitely strengthen our market position."

The biggest change of all for Incada, though, has no effect at all on printability or the economy of customers' own processes, the company notes. Incada is manufactured at Iggesund Paperboard's mill in Workington. This spring, the mill changed its energy source from fossil natural gas to biomass, which is burned in a new combined heat and power plant. Overnight, the mill eliminated its fossil carbon emissions from more than 190,000 metric tpy to zero. The reduction is the equivalent of the annual emissions from more than 65,000 cars.

"This adds even more power to our sales message," Mallinson concludes. "Paperboard in general is a very sustainable packaging material. By changing our energy source and upgrading Incada, we are now at the summit of the folding box board market in terms of both product properties and sustainability."

The new Incada can be ordered this autumn with deliveries beginning in November.