Paper Cup as a Modern Icon

Paper Cup Manufacturing

Two-piece paper cup consists of a side wall or shell and a bottom. Paper cup's sidewall can be made of roll stock or pre-cut blanks as well as a bottom piece. Paper cup making commercial equipment manufacturers represent a small but very competitive group of companies that came to life for the last 30-40 years. Before that paper cup making machines were designed internally by major paper cup manufacturers like Dixie, Maryland, Lily Tulip and Sweetheart. These companies developed proprietary paper cup machine design and kept a very strict code for handling paper cup machines going out of commission.

Independent paper cup machine manufacturers eventually took over supply side providing commercially available equipment to anyone who wanted to enter the business of making paper cups. There were several economic reasons for that:

• Major paper cup producers stopped designing their own paper cup machines in the late 1960s-early 1970s I order to reduce engineering expenses. They started to rely on commercially available equipment.
• Appearance of smaller paper cup producing companies that took advantage of the availability of commercial paper cup machine and non-union labor. These companies, sometimes with mom and pop shop personnel and a few (3 to 10) paper cup machines to cover a range of paper cup sizes have created a quite competitive market environment. In ten year period this process was effectively taking market share away from majors.

There are two very distinguished groups of paper cup machines that differ in production speed, quality of the product and price.

The smaller group consists of quality paper cup machines suppliers:

• Paper Machinery Corporation - USA
• Horauf Maschinenfabrik - Germany
• Sherwood Industries -USA (now defunct, equipment serviced by Paper Machinery Corporation)
• RSE Rissen - Germany
• Weyhmuller Maschinenbau - Germany

This group is being affected by current economic conditions, however, leading the industry with the state- of- the-art paper cup making equipment with the production speed of up to 330 cups per minute (depending of the cup size), and price tag of up to $1,000,000 per machine.

The second group represents the so called “garage made” machines from Asia (South Korea, China, Taiwan, and India). The paper cup machine manufacturers from this group may not necessary be a small company of dozen people or so but may also be a part of large company that diversified its production paper cup product segment. Currently there are over 50 companies in this group, manufacturing mostly blank fed machines with the production speed of 35 to 100 cups per minute and the price tag from $10,000 to $100,000. There are, however, two companies from South Korea (Hyunjin and Tong Shing Pack) that stand out from a group supplying paper cup machines with a specification being closer to the first group. Paper cup machines made by these companies offer higher production speed and longer service life.

Due to a substantial growth of the drinking cup consumption, especially in the hot drink segment, high speed production equipment expensive as brand new, rarely gets into the second hand equipment market, which is currently saturated with low cost Asian made machines?

Historically, the original paper cup manufacturer, Dixie (currently a division Georgia-Pacific Corporation) destroys decommissioned paper cup machines which were designed and made by the company preventing them to go to the secondary market. Indeed, those 50-60 year old paper cup machines after being upgraded might outperform contemporary Asian made equipment. The principal paper cup manufacturing companies follow Dixie's footsteps protecting their designs and preventing competition to get access to capacity increase. The leader of the paper cup machine industry, Paper Machinery Corporation, prefers to buy its own used equipment and offer it for sale at the lower price after refurbishing and upgrading. In general cup machine market leaders prefer to stay ahead of Asian reverse engineers providing ever improving state-of-the-art machinery.

Paper Cup Prospects

First paper cups were cut out and glued together from plain virgin fiber paper and then went to waxing chambers to make them water tight. Wax coated paper cups are rarity now. The main material for cups is now paper stock coated by polyethylene - one side coating (inside) for hot drink cups, two side coating for cold drinks. Modern paper cups joined together using heat and pressure using melted polyethylene as a bonding agent.

New development in paper cup structure comes mostly in hot drink cups. There are several commercial approaches like double and triple separated walls or foamed outside poly coating, creating insulation effect.

Despite cup manufacturers' claims that paper cups are friendly for environment, the bulk of used paper cups end up in landfills due to the high cost of recycling while separating plastic coating from paper substrate. Petroleum oil based plastic coating of a paper cup prevents paper fiber from decomposing (naturally biodegradable paper is not in contact with decaying means).

Solution, however with extra cost, for sustainable paper cups comes from bioplastic technology. Despite higher price tag the bioplastic industry is on the rise. According to trade association European Bioplastics, this industry challenges economic crisis, building new plants and investing in product innovation. The biodegradable concept based on polylactic acid (PLA) was pioneered by Nature Works LLC, American company with branches in Europe in Japan, that marketed the Ingeo™ brand of PLA based plastic. So biodegradable or compostable paper cup now is made of virgin paper (which degrades naturally) coated with PLA based plastic. Several principal manufacturers in the US and worldwide produce such cups. Huhtamaki developed BioWare® paper cups, with coating made from NatureWorks Ingeo™ bioplastic, International Paper Foodservce Division sells Ecotainer® paper cups with similar concept and Solo Cup Bare™ makes hot and cold paper cups as well. All these products are considered to be ecologically friendly replacing traditional paper cups with petroleum based polyethylene coating that are difficult to recycle and destined mostly to landfill sites.

However, the advantages of biodegradable notion are rather ambiguous. Firstly, the compostable cup budges the eco-responsibility from the manufacturer to the user which means that the consumer needs to deliver the used cup into a compost bin which may not be around or it takes to much efforts to do so. Secondly, the corn starch-based products (corn is a principal bioplastic source) may bring some unexpected consequences, like dramatic food price increases and even political complication between users in developed world and suppliers from low-income countries. So greenwashing (the Plastics News Magazine definition of greenwashing is as the inevitable result when sales and marketing attempt to capitalize on the broad consumer appeal of sustainability and environmental responsibility to influence purchasing or policy decisions) is quite high in case of paper cups. It should not, however, tarnish the paper cup image as a true 20th century icon that two American men, Lawrence Luellen and Hugh Moore brought to humanity over hundred year ago saving millions from contagious diseases.