Category: Specialties

Cigarette paper is made from thin and lightweight “rag fibers” (non-wood plant fibers) such as flax, hemp, sisal, rice straw, and esparto. The paper is available in rolls and rectangular sheets of varying sizes, and has a narrow strip of glue along one long edge. It may be transparent, colored and flavored.

Tissue paper is produced on a paper machine that has a single large steam heated drying cylinder (yankee dryer) fitted with a hot air hood. The raw material is paper pulp. The yankee cylinder is sprayed with adhesives to make the paper stick. Creping is done by the yankee’s doctor blade that is scraping the dry paper off the cylinder surface. The crinkle (crêping) is controlled by the strength of the adhesive, geometry of the doctor blade, speed difference between the yankee and final section of the paper machine and paper pulp characteristics.

Tea bag paper is related to paper found in milk and coffee filters and is a blend of wood and vegetable fibers. The latter is bleached pulp abaca hemp, a plantation banana plant grown for its fiber, mostly in the Philippines and Colombia. Some bags have a heat-sealable thermoplastic such as PVC or polypropylene as a component fiber on the inner tea bag surface

A means of printing or imaging utilizing a colored wax (similar to a crayon) that is melted and fused to special coated papers. Thermal transfer is utilized by some types of inexpensive color desktop printers manufactured by QMS, Océ, Seiko, and Tektronix, which have the ability to generate PostScript output.