15 April 2023

Sustainable Packaging



By Jim Thompson

Back in March, I attended the Smithers Sustainable Packaging Conference in Chicago.

I came away with the perception that the Europeans are well ahead of North America in sustainable substrates.

Billerud seems to be bringing this technology to North America with their acquisition of the former Verso assets and their announced capital expenditures at Escanaba, Michigan.

Graphics Packaging seems to be in the hunt with their new machine at Kalamazoo and their announced project at Waco, Texas, which we discussed last month.

Sonoco perhaps deserves honorable mention in this race.

The European players are playing hardball. Since they are using sustainable forestry practices and energizing their mills with biomass boilers burning essentially wood waste, they were touting that to call your product sustainable, you should not be using natural gas or purchased electricity (unless you can prove it comes from generators such as wind or solar).

More to come...

Note: Neither I or anyone on the Paperitalo staff own any individual pulp and paper stocks.

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