Huhtamaki Field Trip!

Huhtamaki manufactures specialty containers for food stuffs such as ice cream and soft drinks, which requires a container that won't allow the contents to escape, etc.

Huhtamaki has $800 million in revenue in North America alone, and has 2,800 employees in 15 facilities on this continent. They gross 2 Billion Euros in net sales annually.

Their materials include paperboard, commodity plastic resins, molded fiber (wood cellulous), metals, and engineered plastics.

Forming: To form these cups and such, they dissolve certain chemicals within the material and form a cup mold.

Cutting: Generally, Huhtamaki uses Dye cutting on all of its products.

Joining: Most of their products are held together by thin layers of polyethiline.

Finishing: The final cups are printed with their exact labels as prescribed by the company (that produces the actual product). Also, a thin clay coating is put on many of their products.

Thanks to Huhtamaki for hosting our class, and May for arranging our field trip.

-Randa Mortensen

Lawrence Paper Co. Field Trip!!!

Lawrence Paper Company does not merely make boxes, they make displays, 2-in-1 shifting containers, and many more unexpected things.

For their materials, they primarily get their paper from paper mills including Green Bay Packaging and several others. Their forming technologies basically start with CAD drawings and renderings, and to prep the material for cutting, they bake it to cure the cornstarch within it. Their cutting technology is sophisticated for shelling out lots of the same cuts in a short period of time. They have 3 rotary dye cutters, and dye cuts which are custom made in-house. They also have two different types of dye cutting; Flat dye cuts and barrel dye cuts. The flat ones are used for more intricate box cuts because they take more time, and barrel dye cuts for simple designs. For joining boxes, they use special glues, as well as make it so the boxes fold in on themselves. For those particular folds, they generally score the lines to make them quick and easier to fold. For finishes, some boxes go out plain brown, while others are printed on with their industrial color printer, ink printed on, laminated over, or perhaps a combination of the formers.

All of their programming is custom-done in-house, and they make their ow ink as well as do their own color matching. Lawrence Paper Co. is one of the leading corrugated companies in the country, and has resided in Lawrence for 120 years. Quite a company, huh! Their factory is so efficient, and they have pretty much perfected the technique of box making, at least on a production scale.

Thank you to Lawrence Paper Co. for the tour!

-Randa Mortensen

Waste = Food

Initially, when I heard the title of this film, it made me think of recycling waste into our food processing industry, and that just kinda freaked me out. But, to back track from my sci-fi-futuristic-utopia-that-isn't-really-a-utopia thoughts, the film was actually about creating products with their whole life span in mind and trying to make it so they don't last beyond the amount of time that we use them. When Nike has more shoes in landfills than on people's feet or in their closets, you better believe we as humans are about to have some BIG problems.

Not all hope is lost though, there is a shift going on now, a shift in thinking. If the materials we use for shoes, clothing, cell phones, upholstery, etc. is designed with a journey in mind encompassing beginning AND end, we can solve this problem. It may take decades, in fact, it will take at least a couple, but if large companies such as Nike take the initiative, the example will be set, and the shift inevitable.

-Randa Mortensen