Following the open letter "What happened to the quality of paper"  written by David Bland, I saw that Chris Venables of Antalis responded to this with an excellent reply "Modern coating not to blame for increased fading".

Chris' response is actually truly accurate, and for me, as the recently retired UK technical director of Stora Enso UK, it irritates me immensely to read David's article, which is full of misunderstanding and is typical of what we hear from printers who do not have a strong background in papermaking /coating histories and therefore do not always appear to have their press chemistry under control.

As a company Stora Enso made great efforts to bring together groups of printers for presentations on papermaking and coating technicalities, but the response was always poor. However the saving grace was that those small intimate seminars that we managed to present at various printers' premises over the country were always met with astonishment, in that we all learned a lot of simple facts about each other's problems.

Printers must remember that paper costs are generally some 50% of the total cost of a print job so therefore we have to learn as much as we can about each other. The same applies to chemical producers, ink producers etc.

Printing is a very technical process (if one wants to get it right) and all knowledge is good, especially as all techniques in the industry have moved on dramatically over recent years, which increases the need to improve the flow of information passed between our various professions.

I trust that David has digested the excellent factual response from Chris, and indeed the other responses from the paper industry that you published on your website.


Perhaps then it is prudent and opportune for me to go back a little further in history as an expansion of Chris' reply.

As a company Stora Enso is proud to have built up over many years one of the most professional and strongest (there are others of course) technical departments in the world, employing both papermakers, but most important of all time served professional printers, who understand the intricate technicalities of print, both practically and theoretically, something that very few printers are able to boast these days.

So let me firstly answer the question that David posed: "What happened to the quality of paper?" The honest and factual answer is: "the quality of paper and board, in every respect, has improved out of all recognition steadily over the years!".  

I suppose I must now justify this answer.

David mainly concentrates on yellowing I whole heartedly agree with Ron Brindley's initial response to this in his opening paragraph "coated papers have always been subject to fade this is not a new phenomena".

I distinctly remember that even back in the 1950s when I worked in the technical department of one of the UK paper producing giants, we regularly and routinely tested both uncoated as well as coated stock for fade using a laboratory instrument especially designed to accelerate this exposure to UV light over a short period Xenotest I recall. So this was an issue way back then!

What one must remember is that in those days paper quality was "poor" in comparison to the sophisticated product that it is nowadays. papers were naturally "yellow" and although I can't remember exactly, with whiteness figures only in the mid/high 80% small degrees of fade were really pretty unnoticeable and therefore immaterial.

Then there was the great revolution to add lots of OBAs to improve the "apparent" whiteness not good as these are in fact irritant/carcinogenic products and even banned in certain countries, for example Japan.

These OBAs were added to the body of the paper also and china clay was beginning to be seen as a naturally "yellow" product there was a big demand from end users for better whiteness thereby improving ink contrast etc.

So what happened in what I feel is a short period of time?  Well the pressure was on to produce these whiter products, and although Neutral Sizing had been used in Liquid Packaging products for some time as it is resistant to Lactic Acid, present in milk and milk products (I believe Enso was the first company to perfect this method of sizing as they were / are so big in liquid packaging) it seemed that a new naturally whiter pigment (Calcium Carbonate / chalk) could be used in combination with Neutral Sizing the traditional Acid Sizing would be of no use in combination with Calcium Carbonate as the two react violently the papermakers saw this as a breakthrough to producing what the customer wanted, whiter papers and boards for higher quality printing.

Of course there was also a price advantage over traditional China Clay, and again this met customer demands to try to stabilise paper prices the paper producing mills were struggling with enormous investment costs if they were to stay in business, hence the unfortunate demise of so many good UK producers who could not or would not reinvest in modern equipment remember an all new coated paper producing machine, to be of economic production capabilities is an investment of anything in the area of 350-400m.

Gradually these whiter products were introduced into the market place, and yes there were teething problems press chemistry was traditionally acid fount based, and remembering what I mentioned earlier, acid and Calcium Carbonate react together.

Also press chemistry was extremely poorly monitored in terms of pH (acidity), conductivity (was it ever measured?) and general cleanliness. So big problems which had to be addressed to accommodate these "new" whiter paper products which the end users were demanding, and to be supplied at no significant cost hike.

Press chemical suppliers nowadays generally have a good knowledge of these problems and modern additives should be able to combat "glazing" or similar problems have you tried for instance Neutral buffering fount additives ?

Much more detail is available from my experience on these issues, but one story springs to mind involving a complaint from a certain printer that he could not print on our product, however he desperately wanted to use this.

We agreed to visit and buy some machine time for my colleague and myself to "play" on one press.

This was a large print shop with something like eight or 10 presses.

The first obstacle we found was that we could not empty the fount trays as the taps were jammed and had obviously never been drained! The trays were in fact disgusting and full of contamination.

So whilst my printer colleague checked the press over, pressures etc, I arranged the press chemistry, 2.5% buffered the label said Why? we started with 0.5% (probably under dosed but ok for initial attempts) and the solution buffered ok. To cut a long story short between us we had the press running on our "unprintable" product within a couple of hours.

The print room manager stopped all presses and we were asked to give a short presentation in the canteen with all operatives.

The printer then ran a "clean" pressroom with well monitored press chemistry and my understanding is that they are happy to this day.

So let's move back to the articles in question, yellowing, yes but not a new phenomena, we have established this. However as the whiteness has constantly increased, unfortunately a very small change in whiteness at such high levels is noticeable  nothing has changed, it's just that the affect is now more visible or evident.

The measurement of whiteness has also been a problem, as the readings are so high nowadays that they tend to run off the traditionally accepted scales so a different scale is now used which gives a "logical" figure whereas the old scales would be in excess of 100%.

David also mentions that he feels that modern papers feel soft and have no "crackle" to them.

Maybe I can address this by pointing out yet again that by customer demand as well as environmental issues papermakers have developed products with the same stiffness / rigidity values, using less raw material in terms of timber than some time ago.

I believe that there are products in the market place that now have identical stiffness values but with up to half of the raw material than earlier my ex-mill colleagues will no doubt be able to correct me but there are products now of 190gsm that compete exactly with the same product of years ago which were of 280 / 300gsm. That is dramatic and is fact again customer and environmental damands have forced the papermakers to increase Bulk levels to accommodate this trend so sorry David but your opinion here is not valid.

Going back to OBA's there is in fact much, much less used these days, (not more as David suggests) this is mainly due to the ongoing development of PCC's (Precipitated Calcium Carbonates) and their natural very high whiteness I must also point out that these products give the printer outstanding whiteness, outstanding ink lift, outstanding print gloss (and Delta Gloss) and much improved ink mileage. Oh! and David's point about archival suitability, with non acid sizing and excess of Calcium Carbonate this issue is also perfectly addressed and is not a serious issue any more. It was the free acid that caused paper degradation over years of standing  and the only place acid may now be added is ON PRESS, however hopefully the excess Cal., Carbonate should deal with this.

Remember the demands on the papermaker for papers that run well on 8 and 10+ colour presses and in demanding blanket to blanket formation  all of dramatic benefit to the printer and I must add that for the papermaker due to the cost of production of PCCs the cost advantage of using naturally occurring Calcium Carbonate is no longer a fact so lots of advantages for the printer in his war on cost and improved printability, but none really for the papermaker!

The only "weapon" the papermaker can fall back on is volume production from latest technology equipment, and this is expensive who would ever have believed that "Art Papers" as we can now call them are being produced on 10metre wide machines running at some 60mph ie producing something approaching 500,000 tonnes of product / annum. That is astounding, and perhaps David should visit, if he has not done so already,  the fantastic machine at Stora Enso, Oulu mill in Finland which fits the parameters noted above a 350m+ investment!

So what more can I add to my recitation I could add much more let me in conclusion than say that I have the greatest respect for Ron Brindley's article, and he hits the nail on the head more concisely than I have, but I did feel the necessity to expand on certain areas to drive the message home: paper quality has improved dramatically over the years, and most dramatically in the last decade.

If David is still having problems (and does not recognise the major benefits I have listed briefly) then he really must see to his press chemistry and monitor this more closely he will achieve fantastic results on modern coated papers, without the necessity to have to use expensive so called "art papers" this again is proven by conclusive testing both on our own mill print presses and by totally independent exhaustive testing at various printers over the UK.

What more can I say, I rest my case.

Mike Harris (Stora Enso UK Technical Services Director 1972 - April 2003)