It's all in the box

• Optimising waste management at corrugated cardboard packaging company
• Saves about € 133 300 a year on materials and another € 300 000 a year on the energy bill

Tripilsky Packing Plant produces corrugated cardboard packaging. The company has two corrugators, a gluing line, two cutting and four nibbling machines, a painting line, shredding machines and a modern boiler plant with 5.2 MW gas-fired boiler. The installed capacity of equipment for corrugated cardboard production is 70 million m2/year.

The company operates in three shifts with three stops over the 24-hour working day. When one shift is over, all leftover materials (paper, glue, paint) were considered as waste. Measures were introduced to reduce energy costs and waste associated with production.

Key results

Low cost/no investment measures included the optimisation of cutting processes and reorganisation of shifts to minimise waste. This saves 1 800 tonnes of paper and cardboard and 670 MWh of gas. Another low/no-cost measure was to use potato-starch instead of corn-starch, saving 3 tonnes of additives.

Measures requiring investment included the use of modifying additives which help reduce glue consumption by 20 % (savings of over € 12 500/year), new approaches to reduce waste paint, saving the company a further € 50 000/year. Management also decided to replace PVA adhesive with a hot-melt glue which sped up the gluing process, increased case-hardening and reduced defects and waste.