Smurfit Munksjö Paper Billingsfors Sweden:
MiniWrapper Helps Secure a Significant New Order from China

Interleaving paper for protecting sheet steel at a major manufacturer in China presented a substantial new market opportunity for the Billingsfors specialty papers mill. A recently installed MiniWrapper ensured that the Chinese order became a reality, because all hot melt had to be eliminated from the packaging for the interleaving stock. With Billingfors’ previous wrapping system, hot melt used to seal the packaging had contaminated and damaged the rolls of interleaving paper.
MiniWrapper eliminated this problem entirely, opening the way for
important new orders for the mill.

Stefan Marklund, Production Manager:
“Our mill experienced problems for a long time with our previous wrapping system. The old system used hot melt for pick-up and sealing of the polyethylene packaging material. The machine operator had to stop the machine frequently to clean glue from the machine and the support rollers. When we received a claim from our Chinese customer that hot melt spills had bonded the interleaving paper sheets together, making them nearly useless for the intended application, we knew we needed to take immediate action. To ensure our customer that this damage would never happen again, we had to totally eliminate hot melt from our wrapping process. This allowed us to give a one hundred percent guarantee that such damage would never again occur, and we retained our customer".

Quick decision
Mr. Marklund emphasizes that new market opportunities are critical to the Billingsfors facility: “In the past, carbonless papers were our major product line, but today that market has virtually disappeared. It is vital that we successfully locate new markets and produce new products for them. We were very excited about finding a profitable niche in interleaving papers, and particularly happy about finding a new, large Chinese customer.
Needless to say, we were quite frustrated when we received a large damage claim from them due to hot melt contaminating the product. We decided very quickly to install the new “glueless” MiniWrapper, and we have had no reason whatsoever to regret this decision".

Less than 24 hour installation
At Billingsfors, the previous large wrapping unit was simply replaced with the MiniWrapper, which was designed to operate on the existing floor rails. The new MiniWrapper was wired to the existing electrical cabinet and PLC, and was operational in less than 24 hours.

Satisfied operator
Magnus Norberg regularly operates the MiniWrapper unit at Billingsfors, and he finds his job to have many fewer headaches than before: “There were many mechanical components in the old system that could cause operational problems, and which required a lot of maintenance. Worse, we had to clean the machine frequently because of hot melt spills. The MiniWrapper is much easier to work with, there is no constant cleaning up of glue messes any longer, and the machine runs much more quietly than the old one.”.

Second machine
The installation of the first MiniWrapper in October 2004 was followed by a second MiniWrapper installation in July 2006 in the Spantex department (special decor paper).