Holmen launches a whiter book paper for a brighter future

Print Solutions

Holmen is introducing Holmen Book Bright, a new, whiter wood containing book paper that reproduces colours with clarity and intensity. The paper offers a high level of opacity and can help reduce environmental impact across the book market.

With Holmen Book Bright, the company is taking another major step forward in developing sustainable, high performance materials for modern book production.

This paper combines a high level of whiteness with superior opacity, ensuring excellent readability and image reproduction with excellent print quality even at lower grammages. In doing so, it is helping to drive the market transition towards lower carbon emissions in the production of richly illustrated educational material and in general publishing.

With its advantageous qualities the new paper grade enhances the reading experience, which is now more crucial than ever in our increasingly digital everyday life. The highly bright and even surface makes it possible to produce more colourful, vibrant and engaging books.

The paper is made from fresh fibres, a by‑product from sawmills and sustainable forestry, and is produced in a resource efficient way at the company’s paper mills, whose carbon footprint is one of the lowest in the world per tonne of paper.

Holmen’s production process preserves the properties of the fresh fibres, resulting in a higher level of page thickness and opacity. That means that less content shows through to the other side of the page when a low grammage weight is used. This enables publishers to use fewer tonnes of paper for the same number of books – or print more books with the same amount of material. The result is lower emissions, a lower distribution weight and lower overall production costs. Altogether, this helps increase the availability of affordable printed books with a low environmental impact.

All of these qualities make the paper particularly well suited to educational publishing, where printed material continues to play a crucial role in reading comprehension. Research, starting with the many studies summarised in the Stavanger Declaration in 2019, has increasingly been showing how printed material supports a deeper focus and understanding compared with digital devices.

‘The educational market has been leaning heavily towards digital, but rising digital costs and concerns about screen based reading are shifting the conversation,’ said Christophe Irion, segment manager for educational books. ‘Holmen Book Bright gives publishers a way to print more books with less environmental impact – supporting learning where print matters the most.’

Switching from woodfree paper to Book Bright results in brighter, lighter and more convenient books to read and carry around – important benefits for students and readers of all ages.

‘Holmen has been a supplier on the book market for more than two decades. I am proud to say that Holmen Book Bright is a sustainable, high performance alternative for progressive book production,’ said Anders Gyllenhammar, sales director for the book segment. ‘Publishers are looking ahead, and so are we,’ he explained. ‘For a world that depends on knowledge, we are doing what we can to make the future brighter, starting with production and the materials we choose.’

Holmen Book Bright samples show excellent image reproduction in 60 and 70 g/m2.