Pulp, Paper and Board: Technical and Business Services
Independent technical investigation, development and support for the pulp, paper and converting industries
For 70 years Pira has been a centre of knowledge and expertise for paper and board manufacture and end-use. We are independent of all producers and can offer a truly objective service to suppliers and users of fibres, specialty chemicals, polymers and pigments.
Pira serves not just the paper and board sector, but also the wider world of materials - allowing you to tap into a broad spectrum of knowledge. Having joined The Smithers Group in 2010, Pira is now affiliated to Smithers-RAPRA UK who can provide addition resources for testing and development of plastic and elastomeric materials.
Our services include:
- Strategic market insights
- Pulp and raw material optimisation
- Product performance
- Process development
- Coatings development
- Converting and corrugating optimisation
- Recycling investigations
- Environmental solutions
Our strength is our understanding of the connection between sheet structure and product performance in end-use. This extends up-stream to both virgin and recycled fibre and to filler effects. Pira's practical approach is underpinned by applied research into fibre properties and sheet structure. Our technical resources are reinforced by our Strategic Market and Business Intelligence functions to provide a unique breadth and depth of support for your business.
We understand your business from the development of an idea to the evaluation of a completed product. Pira combines knowledge, experience and inventiveness with integrity, thoroughness and objectivity. We can supply both extra resources and extra knowledge to bring a product to fruition, save time and reduce risk. We can work at your site or at Pira.
How Pira can help you
- New product development: what to produce, for which market and how to do it
- Enhanced product quality: improving raw materials and efficiency, reducing variability
- Technical support and troubleshooting: fibre properties, sheet forming, retention aid and wet end sizing optimisation, chemical additive evaluation, surface analysis, calendering, coating, physical and chemical testing, water and effluent
- Fibre development: pulping process optimisation, bleaching, recycling, repulping, deinking, cleaning
- Testing and end-use performance: strength, surface, frictional and optical properties, thermal and electrical properties, permeability, printability, runnability, repulpability, recyclability
Facilities
Pira boasts UKAS-accredited testing laboratories, analytical chemistry facilities, image analysis, sheet forming, surface treatment as well as access to pulping, stock preparation, forming and coating plant.
Learn more about the behaviour of fillers. Listen to this expert briefing from Pira International Consultant Nigel Jopson focusing on fillers for paper and the unexpected consequences they can have....more
Tools and techniques for the modification of fibres are proliferating. But what are the opportunities and which have the most commercial potential? Join Pira International Consultant Nigel Jopson as he explores the subject....more