Earlier this week, the online news and information indexing service, TheSequitur, hosted in San Francisco, Calif., USA, acquired access to and re-published a summary explaining specifics of how white "cardboard" has been characterized and sub-defined for the global markets by China, a large and growing global user of cartons as the largest growing tobacco consumer, in which cardboard cartonboard is commonly used. Because of the dominant market, China has for white cardboard compared with other major nations and because of the growing nature of the APAC region overall for paper products, these definitions often become standard for the global industry or are at least noted for easier trading and selling purposes.  

While corrugated paperboard is commonly used for larger boxes, smaller boxes and especially cartons such as for cigarettes, cosmetics, and various luxury items that employ fine paper packaging use different cardboard grades to form thin cartonboard or cardboard packet. "Cardboard boxes" as standard terminology may refer also to corrugated board, but are actually a specific type of much thinner board used within the industry. White cardboard is commonly used in paper packets/cartonboard of various types and standards defined by the Chinese market.

White cardboard has a basic definition of being thick, strong, and large as a paper cardboard type. As the surface is not colored, it is often called white cardboard. China’s white cardboard is reported as divided into "A, B, C" or three levels. A is being defined as having a whiteness of not less than 92%, B is not less than 87%, and C is not less than 82%.

White cardboard raw material must be 100% bleached chemical wood pulp, which is qualified in the report as being "the best bleached softwood kraft" type pulp. Packets of white cardboard require high stiffness, bursting strength, smoothness and whiteness. Among the paper's required levels, it is not to have streaks, spots, unevenness, production, or warpage due to the use in smaller packages as "packets" of white cardboard. 

White cardboard packets, very common but not exclusive to being tobacco-box style cartonboard packaging, are distinguished by being two major types. One type, of the lower rated brightness, is the FBB (yellow core), while the aforementioned type A -- at least 92% brightness -- is known as the SBS (white core), using the FBB and SBS packets as single coated white cardboard. FBB is formed in the less brightened grades by a three pulp process. There is a surface layer and the underlying use of sulfate wood pulp with a final core layer of the use of chemical mechanical wood pulp. This long-fiber pulp in many small fibers, fiber bundles less, as the thickness of paper is better, therefore, the same weight of FBB is much thicker than that of the SBS packet.

SBS creation is usually carried out by three processes known in the Chinese industry as plasma composition, surface layer, core layer, and the underlying use of bleached kraft pulp. Front (print side) of the coating layer, with the FBB also use two or three times as blade coating, no coating layer opposite. In addition to being used as a core layer in white cardboard packaging, fully bleached kraft pulp, of very high whiteness, is also called "white core" as a common definition of the material in the region.