Visit to Greiz Mill

Last week, together with Mr Fenner himself (!),  I was fortunate enough to visit the mill in Germany that makes our Colorset paper. Greiz Mill is part of the Koehler group of companies which is still a family owned papermaker. The group is mainly involved with the production of thermal coated and carbonless papers, but the mill we visited specialises in producing recycled products.

Greiz is a very attractive, ancient town in Thuringia in eastern Germany, close to Leipzig and is unusual in having two castles. The mill can trace it's history back to the 1590's, with the current machine at the mill being installed in the 1960's.

You can see from the picture here, how seriously they take their recycling (and it is stacked very neatly)



...and here I am, shivering, in front of the bales of recycled fibre (see the snow on the ground!)






Mr Mallon, the Technology and Quality Manager, taking us through the various stages of the recycling process:









...and below is the picture that shows the reason that Colorset is such a well made sheet of paper. What you are looking at is a picture of a "twin-wire" paper machine, which is generally regarded as the best type of machine on which to make fine paper.

Effectively, the machine starts by making two seperate webs of paper which come together in the papermaking process making a superior, even sided sheet of paper (not to be confused with duplexing).

...and here (above) is the magic piece of equipment manufactured by Escher Wyss, called a "top former".

Here I am standing by the paper machine, which is making our Colorset Magenta, with a smile on my face knowing that our lovely coloured paper is made on a machine with a superior twin wire, while the coloured paper made for that other well known, Hull based paper merchant, is only made on a single wire machine!

I would like to thank everyone at Greiz and Koehler who made our trip very worthwhile and enjoyable.

www.koehlerpaper.com

http://www.koehlerpaper.com/en/unternehmen/standorte/greiz.php

Posted by Justin Hobson 13.12.2012