Stora Enso (Finland) reports that the company’s Ensocoat board is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Ensocoat is produced at Stora Enso's Imatra Mill in Finland, where Board Machine (BM) No. 2 was started in 1956. Previously, the mill had only produced brown kraftliner, but BM 2 was designed from the outset to produce white packaging board to meet growing market demand.

 

In 1963, a new mineral coating machine was introduced at the mill to produce board with a better printing surface. Around the same time, the mill's birch pulp production capacity was increased, thus opening up new opportunities for product development. The first production run of a mineral-coated specialty board was in 1964. The initial steps in the development of Ensocoat had been taken.

 

In the mid-1970s, BM 2 went through a number of renovations and a new inline coating section was built. The improvements focused on quality and efficiency. From now on, BM 2 was to produce only fully white board for demanding packaging end uses and high-quality print works. At the same time, laboratory tests were strongly developed. Products intended for graphical end uses were tested in terms of visual appearance and printing properties, such as cleanliness, shade, formation, ink density, and ink drying.

 

In the 1980s, the capacity of BM 2 was increased significantly, and the Ensocoat brand became established in the international market. The brand was promoted by a high-profile cigarette packaging campaign in 1984, for example. In the same year, Imatra mills started to produce three-layer board. The multilayer structure was revolutionary as it significantly improved the board's stiffness, dimensional stability, and strength properties.

 

During the new millennium, Ensocoat quality improvements have focused on whiteness, brightness, bluer shade, improved UV resistance, and better surface smoothness. In 2010, improved Ensocoat was re-launched with a new logo and a posh marketing campaign, aiming to take the lead in the SBS (solid bleached sulfate) board category. In the graphical business, the position of Ensocoat has been strengthened this year by the EU Ecolabel certificate, with Ensocoat being the first SBS board in the world to receive this status.

 

In 2014, Stora Enso and Ensocoat are taking another step forward as the World Class Manufacturing program is being introduced on BM 2 at Imatra Mills. World Class Manufacturing is based on cross-functional improvement teams, where all of the employees are involved in working on improvements to increase safety, environmental performance, quality, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

 

The story of Ensocoat  is available online.