Paper Profile: Kraft

 Kraft paper is commonly found whenever you go to a supermarket, fast-food restaurant, pet or garden store, even the mailbox. Usually brown (if unbleached), kraft is used to make grocery bags and the holders around six-packs of refrigerated soda or beer. Unbleached kraft is also used for brown envelopes and in mail wrappings for magazines and catalogs. Multiple-layer unbleached kraft creates a shipping sack for pet food, cat litter, fertilizer, and cement. Bleached kraft can be white or colored and is often found in carryout bags from fast-food restaurants.

   Grocery and retail bags represent about 43 percent of kraft shipments, with multiwall sacks accounting for 38 percent and wrapping and converting papers adding another 19 percent, according to a November 2001 grade profile from Pulp & Paper.
   Strength is a key physical attribute of kraft papers—the word kraft even means “strong” in German—though the grade has suffered in recent years from weak markets.
   This weakness is especially clear in the grade’s largest market—grocery and retail bags, which have long faced stiff competition from plastic bags. Producers of unbleached kraft packaging papers cut their capacity 40 percent from 1985 to 1995, with capacity falling another 7.6 percent in 2001, according to Pulp & Paper and the American Forest & Paper Association (AFPA). Bleached kraft paper capacity declined even more, falling 9 percent, AFPA reports. For now, unbleached kraft paper capacity is expected to remain steady at 1.9 million tons, while bleached kraft capacity should hold at 341,000 tons.

Specifications
There are seven main specifications related to kraft grades in ISRI’s Scrap Specifications Circular 2001:
(15) Used Brown Kraft—Consists of baled brown kraft bags free of objectionable liners and original contents. 
Prohibitive materials—None permitted. Total outthrows may not exceed 1/2 of 1%.
(16) Mixed Kraft Cuttings—Consists of baled new brown kraft cuttings, sheets and bag scrap, free of stitched paper.
Prohibitive materials—None permitted. Total outthrows may not exceed 1%.
(17) Carrier Stock—Consists of baled printed or unprinted, unbleached new beverage carrier sheets and cuttings. May contain wet strength additives. Prohibitive materials—None permitted.
Total outthrows may not exceed 1%.
(18) New Colored Kraft—Consists of baled new colored kraft cuttings, sheets and bag scrap, free of stitched paper.
Prohibitive materials—None permitted. Total outthrows may not exceed 1%.
(19) Grocery Bag Scrap—Consists of baled, new brown kraft bag cuttings, sheets and misprint bags.
Prohibitive materials—None permitted. Total outthrows may not exceed 1%.
(20) Kraft Multi-Wall Bag Scrap—Consists of new brown kraft multi-wall bag cuttings, sheets, and misprint bags, free of stitched papers.
Prohibitive materials—None permitted. Total outthrows may not exceed 1%.
(21) New Brown Kraft Envelope Cuttings—Consist of baled new unprinted brown kraft envelopes, cuttings or sheets.
Prohibitive materials—None permitted. Total outthrows may not exceed 1%.
The ReMA specifications also include two specialty kraft grades denoted as (4-S) Polycoated Bleached Kraft—Unprinted and (5-S) Polycoated Bleached Kraft—Printed.

Recycling Trends and Challenges
In the mid-1990s, roughly one-third of the fiber used to make new kraft paper came from recovered paper—a proportion that has likely remained constant or even increased, says David Stuck, former head of AFPA’s containerboard and kraft paper groups who is now a consultant to the association. Grocery sacks often use 60-percent recycled content, and some kraft products claim to use 100-percent recycled fiber, he adds.
   Many kraft grades are preconsumer items recovered from industrial accounts in the converting industry, notes John Gold of the Newark Group’s Recycled Fibers Division (Marblehead, Mass.). While markets exist for the products, they’re often extremely mill-specific. Certain grades—such as Used Brown Kraft and New Brown Kraft—aren’t even recovered much these days, Gold notes.
   In addition, many U.S. mills can’t handle the glue found in old kraft bags or the chemicals that give “wet strength” to carrier-stock papers. While the fiber in carrier stock is good, the product requires a longer pulp beating time than other kraft papers, explains David Swirsky of Swirsky Enterprises Inc. (Woodbridge, Conn.). As a result, carrier stock is largely an export item, he says.
   Since kraft papers are often more expensive to handle than other recovered papers, especially OCC and double-lined kraft corrugated cuttings, their market depends on the prices of those grades, Swirsky adds. With prices of competing grades currently low, the kraft grades “are pretty much in check right now,” he concludes.  •