A string of multi-million investments for Canadian packaging pioneer Kruger

Canada’s Kruger Packaging Group is investing around CA$20 million to modernise its LaSalle and Place Turcot facilities this year. This follows a significant CA$250 million investment in 2016-2017 in the company’s Trois-Rivières facility to convert a newsprint machine for the production of 100% recycled lightweight and high-strength linerboard.

Kruger Packaging Group says it recently installed a new state-of-the-art converting line at the LaSalle packaging plant worth around CA$10 million. The integrated, high-speed production line, which prints, folds and glues corrugated packaging, produces 24 000 boxes per hour – or 400 per minute – thus making it ‘one of the fastest currently on the market’.

Maximising production

The European-made, fully automated machine also features a twin-head strapping machine. The new line, which operates 24/7, accounts for more than one-third of the plant’s production capacity and gives it the new momentum needed to meet growing demand in the eco-friendly packaging sector. The business asserts it is determined to ‘fuel innovation and make history’.

100% recycled containerboard

Meanwhile, Kruger’s Place Turcot facility, which it says was one of the first in North America to manufacture 100% recycled containerboard back in 1961, will be updated to the tune of CA$ 9 million.

New equipment installed at the Montréal plant is expected to reduce its GHG emissions by 15% and cut its water use thanks to these technological improvements.

A big family

Kruger Packaging Group was established back in 1904 and says it is, at its core, a large enterprise with family business values. Since then, it has specialised in the production of various fibre products, including 100% recycled containerboard; corrugated packaging; publication papers; specialty papers; renewable energy; as well as cellulosic biomaterials.

The group operates plants in five cities across Canada and owns additional sites in five different states in the US, and employs a total of 5000 workers.