Eco-friendly filler for paper mills

Hyderabad-based company’s G-FP additive helps industry save 7,500 trees in the last 2 years

Hyderabad: City-based The Phi Factory is helping about 650 small and medium sized papermills and corrugators in TS, Gujarat, Maharashtra and other States stay competitive. Its filler particle, G-FP, is allowing them to make strong packaging paper but that weighs about 30 per cent less.

In 20 months from February 2019 to October 2020, about units have used the Gorakavi-Filler Particle, named after The Phi Factory’s co-founder Gorakavi Praveen Kumar, to make about 2,500 tonne kraft paper, a key ingredient in packaging segment.

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The company is now gearing up the supply about 40,000 litre GFP per month. “We signed an MoU with a listed company recently. They will make GFP for us. We now has a committed capacity of 0.5 million metric tonne per year paper that is based on GFP. That is huge and we need GFP production to match this,” said Dr Meghana Reddy Jale, another co-founder and also the Chief Executive Officer of the company.

What is the business model?

The company pitches GFP to the FMCG and other players on strength and cost savings. “These companies will pre-qualify our material and insist on their vendors to supply products that are based on GFP. The mills have to purchase GFP from us. Since the weight comes down by about 30 per cent due to the use of GFP, we will compensate the mills for this,” she said about the technology-as-a-service offering.

The total cost saving is about 20 per cent- nine per cent goes to end-users and the remaining 11 per cent is shared by Phi Factor and papermills.

“We got good response for the GFP from the packaging industry, which is deprived of technology. We supply our technology to papermills and buyback the paper they make,” she said.

Problem addressed

Some of the companies were using a 5 or even 7-ply paper for strength. This was increasing weight and also cost. “With use of GFP-based paper, they are able to cut it down to three-ply. If 150 gsm paper was used before, now 120 GSM paper is enough. There is no change in strength,” she said adding that this will result in lower usage of resources. So far, about 7,500 fully grown trees have been spared the axe, she said.

The company evolved G-FP from a solid formulation into liquid. “G-FP was offered as a powder which was to be added (ten per cent by weight. It become more labor intensive than expected. We now have a concentrate that has to be used just one per cent,” he said. “With a small tweaking, G-FP can be used to size yarn in textile industry, which apparently is bigger than paper industry,” said Gorakavi.

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