Corrugated Board in Corrugated Production line -

Corrugated board is composed of fluting medium (the wavy part of corrugated board) glued to one or more layers of linerboard to achieve a low weight but quite strong structure.

Different architectures are possible to respond to the different requirements of this packaging material. The single-faced board is normally used for wrapping of goods, for example, wine bottles inside another package. Single or more walled corrugated boards are used for shipment packaging of more or less heavy goods. From the heaviest qualities even furniture or construction materials can be manufactured.

In most cases the paper used as liners and medium is recycled paper that has been surface sized with starch to reach a good strength. The amount of starch in these papers reaches levels of 4–6% of their weight. There is a trend toward lowering the basis weight of fluting and liner papers in order to enable production of boxes with a lower weight.

There is no question that the strength of the boxes shall be maintained despite the weight reduction. Due to this but also due to the fact that with increased recycling ratios the fiber quality is deteriorating, the application of more starch to those papers is required. The driver for weight reduction is that the corrugators purchase the paper based on weight but sell corrugated board based on surface. So using a lower grammage paper they can produce more square meters of corrugated board out of a ton of paper. In addition shipping costs can be reduced with lower weight boxes.

In order to be able to produce more fine packaging material, finer and finer flutings have been developed. Compared to solid board such fine corrugated material has the advantage of a better stiffness at lower weight and in addition also a thermal-insulating effect. Fast food nowadays often is packed in such corrugated material as a substitute for polystyrene tubs.