PACKAGING BASICS
How Packaging is Made
All paper-based packaging originates in a paper or board mill where the paper or board is formed into rolls and sheets. The major packaging grades (containerboard, boxboard, kraft papers) are manufactured in board or kraft paper mills. Specialty grades such as envelopes and labels and tags are made are in what are called fine paper or groundwood mills whose main production is not packaging but printing and writing papers.
The mills’ rolls and sheets are sold to a converter who transforms the raw material into the required packaging design; whether a corrugated container; folding carton; or kraft paper bag or sack.
The packaging can be printed, slotted, creased, folded and glued before being passed on to the brandowner or packager for filling with product prior to distribution to industry or the public.
Any waste material left over from the converting process (corrugated clippings, boxboard trim) is collected on-site and sent back to the recycling mills to make new packaging.
The industry thus has for many years operated its own closed loop in recycling, sourcing most of its secondary fibre from the industrial, commercial and institutional sectors of the economy. In recent years, greater efforts have been made to harvest the “urban forest”, the packaging that ends up in Canadians’ homes.