April 28th 2010

                                      Visit to Smurfit Ltd, Norwich

Smurfit Kappa make corrugated paper at three separate sites, two in Norwich in Norwich, the other in Witney near Oxford. Incidently unlike Haagens Dass the company name has not been contrived, it originated from a Michael Smurfit who started a paper manufacturing company in Ireland. For many years the company was known as the Norwich Corrugated Paper until taken over in the late eighties. The Smurfit Kappa Group is now the largest manufacturers of corrugated paper in the country with 26% of the world share. A major industry right on our doorstep.

Fifteen members of the Society attended Smurfit's Jupiter Road factory on the 28th of April for an escorted visit to the plant led by Chief Engineer Mark Ludlow and Director David Wilde. A fascinating visit in itself, if only to see how to feed 20 tonne rolls of paper onto the production line. Needless to say the whole process, or to be more precise processes (they work back to back) is computer controlled, the speed of operation is impressive, equally impressive the way that variations in the flute profiles, as the corrugations are called, can be adjusted so readily to suit the customer's requirements.

Before our visit I assumed that all corrugated paper was produced to roughly the same specifications, not so the variations are enormous Even the type of adhesive used can vary from batch to batch.

An excellent visit which hopefully we shall be able to repeat some time in the future.

Smurfit Kappa has their own website and also feature quite often on the Packaging News website (packagingnews.co.uk).

Mike Vincent - President