Curtis Fine Papers is specializing in protecting brand owners against increasingly sophisticated methods of fraud
October 2007
By Joanne Hunter
The paper industry has had a rocky ride in the UK in recent years, leading to the closure of mills such as M-real Sittingbourne, DS Smith Sudbrook and Arjowiggins Corpach. Yet Scotland's Curtis Fine Papers has come out of the doldrums and, thanks to some radical restructuring and a strategy to play to its strength in customized and security products, the privately owned company can be upbeat about its future.
Papermaking started on the site of a former whisky distillery at Guardbridge, St Andrews in the 1800s. The water so important in the making of a fine whisky is also being channeled these days into producing specialty products for graphical, security, converter and publishing applications and, more recently, premium packaging products.
The millions of gallons of water taken from Motray Water for the mill's reservoir is flowed back, clean and safe, into the River Eden having passed through the mill's effluent treatment plant.
The Eden estuary is home to grey seals and migrating birds. The mill provides a hide on the site for observing the wildlife there.
"We are ahead of the game environmentally," says operations director Paul Egan. "With our location on an SAC (Special Area of Conservation) our environmental responsibilities are paramount."
Such is the nature of short-run, niche manufacture, that 25% of paper can be rejected during set-up. This is recovered as broke to blend with virgin fiber that is sourced largely from North and South America.
Curtis's annual energy bill is around the GBP 5 million ($10.1 million) mark. Unlike some other mills Curtis was able to "ride out the storm" of November 2005 when in a single month the UK gas price rose from 35p to 180p per therm, an achievement managing director Keith Chapman puts down to customer loyalty and demand for the company's products. "Our prices upped four times in a single year without loss of those customers that were most important to the business. Some have been around for 20 to 30 years."
Finding ways to cut energy costs through energy trading and process improvement are as vital to the mill's sustainability as prey is to a hawk.
In 2004, Curtis replaced a coal-fired plant built in the 1940s with three boilers fuelled by gas to achieve environmental, efficiency and cost benefits.
In the same year, Curtis restructured and consolidated operations on a single site, in the process making deep but necessary cuts in the workforce. The firm believes its leaner team has the skills base to achieve ambitious goals including a continuous stream of pull-driven, market aware new product development. It is aiming for up to eight launches every year and developing new markets for these in the USA and other export territories.
Curtis was US-owned until 2002 and sale-related restrictions on targeting a US customer base are now lifted. Regional enterprise development agency Scottish Enterprise, as part of the Global Scottish Network, is supporting efforts by Curtis to find US outlets and one of its consultants will lead an "international sales and marketing conference" to help make the bigger decisions, says Chapman.
Curtis exports one-third of production to mainland Europe and the rest of the world, 60-70% by indirect selling through merchants, with which Curtis works closely to develop sales of graphical papers. The long-standing relationships built with merchant customers have served the business well over the years, it believes.
A growth area for Curtis is the sales volume being generated in areas where mills deal directly with customers such as security printing and converting.
A specialized mix
In 2004, Curtis was forced to shut the Dalmore facility in Pennycuik (also UK), slash 200 jobs at Guardbridge and develop a new strategy. With a reputation already made in security products, Curtis pledged to become more proactive and work on introducing a stream of products aimed at protecting against increasingly sophisticated methods of fraud.
"The specialized security products market is a fast developing area for our business," says UK technical sales manager, Ken Thom, and the hiring of people in sales roles has begun. Which is timely because it just so happens several separate projects are ready to launch almost simultaneously.
Security and authentication features added for reassurance and prestige at the point of manufacture enable a company or brand owner to source from a single supplier and print anywhere in the world. The fewer people made privy to covert features in the paper and board, the better.
The Veritas graphical range targets the legal profession and academia with a long-life, bright white paper bearing a holographic strip; it is suitable for contracts, deeds and certificates. The effect is aesthetically pleasing, and in addition to a holographic ident, each sheet carries a unique number.
Veritas gives "robust security for printers", says Thom, and, thanks to the level of traceability, documents can potentially be used as viable proof of identification at point of entry into a country. Options include a foil-lined envelope and tamper-evident feature seal. Already launched across 19 countries in Europe with the Papyrus group, Curtis is on the verge of appointing a UK stockist as well.
Curtis has broken onto the premium-product packaging sector with its soon-to-be-launched Hidden Image range. Images built into the base paper become visible by using a special plastic screening lens that will function even through a transparent filmic wrap. This gives brand protection and consumer reassurance in, for example, the pharmaceuticals and perfume markets. Other packaging uses include labels for high-value goods such as whisky.
Even though they are colored, textured and printed, swing tags can be simply authenticated by the same checking process, says Curtis.
Intone branded security paper is designed to protect against ticket fraud. When football tickets are torn, an internal color becomes visible, for instance. Alternatively, so that souvenir tickets and special event passes can remain undamaged, torchlight can be used to show up the color, which can be changed from season to season, year to year, market to market and so on.
Visible watermarking with Intone allows the unique difference to be seen on the surface. In addition, contrasting textures on two sides of the paper -- called Curtis Dualtouch - enables authentication by means of touch.
Curtis produces Intone "uniquely tamper-evident, bespoke ticketing" in a range of basis weights starting at 180 g/m2, available in runs of as little as 2 tonnes (reels or sheets).
Antibacterial paper and boards are suitable for a number of uses including greetings cards and envelopes for sending to hospital patients, medical notes and hospital documents as well as pharmaceutical packaging. The antibacterial treatment inhibits the bacteria replication process ultimately killing the bacteria.
Innovating to always have something new to offer the market is the right business practice to adopt, believes Curtis. It is important to bait the market with fresh ideas; and to be sure the market will bite means first asking, do people want it? Getting the balance right between a rigorous development process and being flexible is another factor in successful, market-led innovation.
Thom sees Curtis now "moving on to the front foot", having slimmed the size of the workforce and become cash positive.
"Ideas coming to fruition at around the same time is a happy coincidence," he says. "We've got to be starting now for 2008/9 launches. We intend to have a continuous pipeline."
To show what is on today's menu Curtis asked Glasgow-based design firm D8 to produce new sets of swatches for its branded papers, Classic, Retreeve and Conservation; one aimed at designers, another for paper merchants.
Papermakers, albeit part of a traditional industry, must be prepared to adapt. Fiber-based technology is advancing and Curtis is dipping its toe into the water, experimenting with nanotechnology to improve litho printability. Approaching a first machine trial it was feeling optimistic as lab work was "looking good".
Empowering the operator
Curtis also looks within its walls to the workforce for ways to better efficiency and lower costs.
A line-up of machines is geared to produce higher value, slower run speed for specialist, niche products. Operational efficiency is achieved by harnessing the experience of the manufacturing teams on-site and "learning through doing".
"We empower machine operators who have an interest in better productivity of their machines," explains Chapman.
A brainstorming session achieved a 20% improvement in changeover times after team leaders spread the word across all three papermaking shifts.
"We lost some key personnel when we closed our Dalmore Mill in 2004," says Chapman, "However we have recruited selectively since then, seeking out new employees with papermaking experience. This has been made possible by the closure of other mills in the UK. We have also introduced a comprehensive training and troubleshooting course for operators, which is building on skill levels that are already some of the highest in the sector."
In a move to reduce finishing losses caused by upstream quality issues, Curtis has linked the papermaking and finishing teams and made them responsible for all aspects of quality and problem solving.
Through changes in shop-floor activity, reducing "loss to drain" has meant a GBP 100,000 ($200,000) annualized cut in costs, and broke is better organized, recorded and maximized. An outstanding issue, though, is resolving the difficulty of reintroducing security and wet-strength production to the system.
Thanks to the sharing of responsibility, "Operators have the personal satisfaction of seeing their ideas put into practice and making a difference, saving time and money and ultimately saving jobs. There is a great willingness to solve problems," says Chapman.
"It's an experiment that appears to be working, although," he adds, "this system is not set in stone. Flexibility is what a manufacturing process demands."
To complement a highly customized manufacturing service, the company runs its own vehicle fleet to provide utmost flexibility. Scotflow has twenty wagons delivering to customers and distribution points for Europe and beyond.
By not standing still Curtis Fine Papers has found a firmer footing after great instability. It has gained new momentum by attacking fresh markets and sectors, finding routes to market off the beaten track, making direct contact with customers to hear what they really want, and opening doors to innovative processes and technology.
Joanne Hunter is a freelance journalist based in Brussels, Belgium.
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