Fifty years ago Papirus discovered its true vocation when it started to produce card board from carefully selected scraps. There are different lines, from 100% recycled to 100% made of cellulose.


Our Raw Material

In order to manufacture quality card board, Papirus relies on three main raw materials:

1) Cellulose - the raw material for paper manufacturing, it is nothing more than pulp made from eucalyptus scraps, which later enters the paper production process. It can be fluid, i.e., sent to the industry as soft pulp through piping, or go through a drying process, and then sold in big plates.

2) Mechanical Pul - Part of the card board raw material. Also called by some as wood pulp, it is the material obtained from wood through mechanical only processes performed in machines called pulp mills, where the wood is cut into logs of the appropriate size, shaved, and cleansed, ground against a rolling stone, generally synthetic. The pulp’s final quality depends on the wood itself, on the kind of stone or disc,as well as on the way the grinding is performed. The main characteristics of the pulp are uniformity, color, pureness, degree of de-watering, and fiber resistance.

3) Scraps - It’s the name given to the paper residues gathered after being used. These materials are gathered by specialized companies, selected, stacked, and sold to the paper mills as raw material. There is not an universal classification of these materials, however, we can name white or silky scraps, water line or mantle, newspaper, undulated, mixed archive, first or second typography, cardboard, and magazines. In the case of Papirus, the scraps can be bought from graphic plants (leftovers of printing process – pre-consumption) or post-consumption scraps, selected from gatherers cooperatives.

3.1) Pre-consumption scraps - A good example is the graphic scraps or those of the paper mill production that return to the manufacturing cycle, and end up not passing by the hands of the consumer. They are, in fact, industrial leftovers.

3.2) Post-consumption scraps - We can name scraps gathered from offices or household discarded dry waste packages scraps, that are later selected to originate a superior quality recycled paper. Only these kinds of scraps help to efficiently decrease the number of landfills, which in the world of paper represent 70% of the total. Post-consumption scraps are all those that have already been somehow handled. During the selective gathering process, the gatherers cooperatives select the scraps, and send them to the recycled paper mills, such as Papirus.

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Manufacturing Process

The manufacturing process of Papirus card board starts long before the raw material arrives at the mill. There are many people involved in the material supplying, starting in the forest – that produces cellulose (virgin fiber) – and going through the gatherers cooperatives that remove papers from the environment, and carefully and attentively select them.



There are basically 5 large flows in this sequence:

1) The cellulose produced from certified forests is delivered directly to Papirus. In this case, the raw material will be used in the product lines that rely on virgin fibers for its formulation, like the Vitasolid.

2) The cellulose will originate paper that will be forwarded to printing houses. The leftovers are collected by Papirus that reuses them in the process.

3) The waste generated by specifiers (industries, for example) is collected by people who produce the scraps, and deliver them to Papirus.

4) The gatherers cooperatives perform the paper collecting process. After the scraps are classified, they go to Papirus’ production process.

5) The longest process is that which includes the gathering of post-consumption scraps, that is, they are gathered after being sold. The packaging passes through the end-consumer hands, and is transformed in residue, which through the process of selective gathering, is then reused by the gatherers cooperatives by means of recycling.

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