Total Packaging Papers shipments were 235,900 tons, 1.7 percent lower than August 2016. Bag & Sack shipments were up 5.5 percent year-to-date, while Food Wrapping shipments were down 8.5 percent over the same period. The operating rate for August 2017 was 90.3 percent, while the year-to-date rate was 88.8 percent. Inventories were 168,600 tons, down slightly since July.
http://afandpa.org/media/news/2017/09/19/american-forest-paper-association-releases-august-2017-u.s.-packaging-papers-specialty-packaging-monthly-report
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Sustainable packaging, which means replacing plastic with paper wherever possible, is not just a question of material availability. While flexible packaging paper may well be threatening to displace plastic packaging, both materials still have to share the same machines for the time being. Questions concerning changeover times and even machine conversions and, above all, process reliability in processing are therefore of primary importance for machine operators. Eckard Kallies, Head of the Flexible Packaging Paper Division at the Koehler Paper Group, explains: "We know just how much pressure the consumer is exerting when it comes to greater sustainability. As a supplier to the packaging industry, we have therefore entered into a strategic partnership with Syntegon, a globally leading processing and packaging technology provider. Although people are demanding to see an instant revolution in terms of greater sustainability, this is only possible by taking an evolutionary path. To ensure that we move step by step in the right direction, Syntegon and the Koehler Paper Group are strategically combining their knowledge."
On the heels of announcing the creation of a new center for deep tech, Nestlé has forged a new partnership with IBM that will leverage the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to boost its innovation pipeline by identifying new high-barrier packaging materials.
Beyond fast-tracking the identification of future packaging materials, this AI partnership will also consider cost, recyclability, and functionality as it relates to ensuring food safety and quality.
Specifically, Nestlé will direct AI to construct a knowledge base of known materials from public and proprietary documents, following a fine-tuned, fit-for-purpose chemical language model that will enable it to learn the representation of molecular structures. That knowledge will be used to learn the correlation between key structural molecular features and the resulting physical-chemical properties, enabling the proposal of new high-barrier packaging materials that shield sensitive products from moisture, temperature swings, and oxygen.
Deep tech center’s high-tech R&D redeployment
The IBM AI partnership is Nestlé’s latest investment geared toward unlocking “a leaner R&D organization, more agile ways of working, a focused project portfolio, and the redeployment of existing R&D resources.”
Smurfit Kappa Group confirms that the boards of directors of Smurfit Kappa and WestRock Company are discussing the key terms of a potential combination to create Smurfit WestRock, a global leader in sustainable packaging. The Potential Combination would be expected to involve the creation of a new holding company, Smurfit WestRock. Smurfit WestRock would be incorporated and domiciled in Ireland with global headquarters in Dublin, Ireland and North and South American operations headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. The Potential Combination would be effected through an Irish scheme of arrangement involving Smurfit Kappa and a merger of a subsidiary with WestRock. Any such combination would result in WestRock shareholders receiving consideration consisting primarily of shares of the Combined Group.