Uncoated paper of LWC QUALITY - SCA Forest Products AB

NEW PM 11 IN LAAKIRCHEN
NEW PM 11 IN LAAKIRCHEN
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Uncoated paper of
LWC QUALITY
A child is born! When SCA Graphic Laakirchen
officially unveiled its new PM 11 it also premiered
GraphoNova, a brand new uncoated
paper that’s already being dubbed
“the successor to LWC”.
TEXT Elisabet Tapio Neuwirth PHOTO Ronnie Zeiller
STAFF AT SCA Graphic Laakirchen wear
the look of proud new parents. Their
“child”, unveiled on September 20 after
intensive preparations and testing, is a
brand new product – GraphoNova.
And there’s something rather special
about this particular baby.
“For the first time, printers and publishers
can get the same performance
from an uncoated paper as they could
previously only get with LWC paper,”
says Wolfgang Kühnel, head of technical
customer service at SCA Graphic
Laakirchen.
“With pm 11 we’ve created a completely
new printing paper for use in
heatset web offset.”
STRIKING A BALANCE
GraphoNova was the product of in-depth
market research lasting several months
and involving a selection of printers and
publishers across Europe. SCA Graphic
Laakirchen put customer needs at the
heart of the process, so both the technology
and the machine’s specification
have been adapted to the requirements
of those using the paper.
What, then, is so special about
GraphoNova Kühnel explains: “You
have to differentiate between two different
interest groups. Publishers, who
often do their own paper buying, look
first at the paper’s optical qualities.
Printers, on the other hand, attach greater
importance to the paper’s production
qualities when it goes through the presses.
We have customers in both these
Wolfgang Kühnel, head of technical customer service,
Dr Sigo Gatterer, head of marketing, Helmut Sageder, in
charge of the PM 11 project, Josef Hafellner, production
manager PM 11.
10 SCA Customer Magazine 3/2002 Graphic Paper

NEW PM 11 IN LAAKIRCHEN
NEW PM 11 IN LAAKIRCHEN
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product segments so we have tried to
strike a good balance between them.”
The result of this effort is Offline
Multinip Calendered paper, or OMC
for short. This is a new class of paper
that combines environmental and lowresource-use
production techniques
with the market’s need for ultra-high
printing and pressing quality – even in
modern offset plants.
“This makes our new product an interesting
and good value alternative to
conventional LWC paper,” observes
Kühnel.
HIGH WHITENESS AND OPACITY
In the past, only LWC paper has managed
to offer whiteness of 75-80 percent.
Those days are now gone.
“We can now genuinely talk of a
‘replacement for LWC’,” says Kühnel.
“We’ve got there by the careful selection
of filler plus the use of environmentally
friendly bleaching techniques and minimising
the loss of whiteness during
the production process.
“GraphoNova’s high whiteness,
combined with its ultra-high opacity
(in excess of 92 percent at 56g/m 2 ), is
primarily due to the separate multinip
calendaring process. Whiteness is enhanced
by a slightly blue ground colour
to the paper, and this allows good,
high-contrast picture reproduction.”
The special surface calendering enables
the paper to be glazed and compressed
well. GraphoNova’s glossiness
exceeds 52 percent.
“The paper is only compressed to
a limited extent,” Kühnel continues.
“This means the paper retains high opacity,
and it also affects its volume and
thus the paper’s stiffness in a positive
way. Compression is concentrated on
the area where the interaction occurs
between printing inks and the paper,
resulting in a greater proportion of the
ink adhering to the surface of the paper.
Together with the high glossiness, this
achieves a print gloss that couldn’t previously
be attained using uncoated paper.”
CAN HANDLE LWC INKS
Printing paper comes under great strain
in offset presses. Wetting with water
and sticky printing inks places heavy
demands on uncoated paper, something
that SCA Graphic Laakirchen has overcome
by developing a new type of surface
sizing and treatment to make the
paper surface water-repellent.
“GraphoNova can even be printed
on using LWC inks with no problems,”
reveals Kühnel. “The cleaning interval
can be increased by up to 100 percent
too, which minimises downtime and
increases productivity at the printing
presses.”
Because pm 11 is a totally new paper
machine it can carry out sheeting and
draining in its own pressing section
under controlled conditions.
“The result is a uniform paper web
in all respects. The vertical and horizontal
profiles must be precise and unvarying
in a way that was unthinkable
The outstanding piece.
A milestone in the development of high quality
publication papers.
GraphoNova sets a new standard and broadens SCA’s product
range to satisfy our customers’ needs.
Welcome to the new paper era.
SCA FOREST PRODUCTS
www.publicationpapers.sca.com
in the past. Both sides of the paper must
be identical for smooth and wrinklefree
printing. This also increases
efficiency in the printing process.”
Kühnel is proud of GraphoNova and
his colleagues in Laakirchen and elsewhere.
“We’ve worked closely with
Voith, the company that built pm 11,
and been supported by our own research
department in Sweden, SCA
Graphic Research. Together, we’ve
combined several production variables
in an intelligent way – from the
machine concept, to the combination
of raw materials and to the paper itself.
GraphoNova is leading the way
into a new paper era.”
Step 3 – everything falls into place. The new GraphoNova supplements SCA’s product
range.
SCA Customer Magazine 3/2002 Graphic Paper
11