Hot Topics
Recycled paper board is an important component of an environmentally responsible and sustainable future that can and should be used in a wide number of applications. Here you will be able to keep up with the most pressing issues related to the RPTA and recycled paperboard.
Mineral Oil
Currently, mineral oil in recycled paperboard food packaging has been identified by some researchers as a concern. The safety of recycled paperboard food packaging is of the utmost priority to the paperboard industry. Our packaging complies with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations for safe food packaging which establish the levels of suitable purity applicable to food packaging applications in the United States.
Read more here about RPTA and Mineral Oil:
- RPTA Mineral Oil Issue Paper
- Statement on U.K. Food Standards Agency Testing, December 15, 2011
- Critical Analysis of Recent European Publications on Mineral Oil
- UK Food Standards Agency
- FDA's comments on mineral oil in Food Chemical News, March 18, 2011
- North American Response to Draft German Regulation of Mineral Oil in Recycled Paperboard, submitted on behalf of the industry by Graphic Packaging International, submitted June 25, 2013
The Comprehensive Program for Food Contact Paperboard
Over a decade ago, members of the Recycled Paperboard Technical Association developed a comprehensive program to ensure that recycled paperboard can be safely used in food packaging in full compliance with U.S. legal and scientific standards. This program includes regular, ongoing testing that looks for a broad range of potential impurities. It also requires implementation of Good Manufacturing Practices and careful sourcing of recovered fiber to enable manufacturers to assure recycled paperboard is suitably pure.
Read more about the RPTA Comprehensive Program.
LATEST NEWS
Industry Benchmarking Survey
The 2025 Profile Study will be initiated this December for first-quarter ’25 sampling. Past Survey reports can be accessed at this member-only page.
2024 Fall Roundtable
On October 16 and 17, we held our highly-rated RPTA Fall Roundtable on Paper Machine Roll Design and Operation, in Appleton, Wisconsin. The slides from our four-hour technical seminar on various types of rolls and press optimization are available at this RPTA members only site, along with materials from other past RPTA educational events. The Roundtable also included tours of two Andritz roll facilities.
UPCOMING EVENTS
2025 Winter Webinar
On January 22nd, we will hold a webinar on Recovered Fiber Grades & Quality. Shawn State, President of Pratt Recycling at Pratt Industries, will discuss recovered fiber grades and quality trends. He will be followed by Pat McEnroe, Product Group Director at Kadant Black Clawson, who will discuss process strategies to deal with contaminants in recovered fiber sources.
2025 Production-Technical Seminar
The event is May 4-7, 2025, at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
This year, the RPTA Seminar will be more integrated with the TAPPICon Conference. RPTA members will register through RPTA and your registration will include all TAPPICon sessions and events, at a substantial savings over past years’ registration fees.
RPTA will still recruit presentations on topics of current interest to our members: Safer Operations, Product Strength Improvement Methods; and Waste Reduction. In addition, RPTA will host a two-hour mini-course on paper machine wet end chemistry, provided by a well-respected expert.