Pradeep Gooptu 

The paper and paperboard marketing structure looks set for a shake-up with industry heavyweight ITC Ltd striking out to push its elemental chlorine-free (ECF) paper and board directly to end-users.

In this case, ITC has launched a special campaign in the Durga Puja-Diwali season to get Kolkata's 5000-plus sweet sellers to start using ECF material this season.

"The market size is 1500-1700 tonnes per month, which works out to nearly 200,000 tonnes of board a year", pointed out ITC paper business CEO Pradeep Dhobale.

The size of the all-India sweets business would be at least ten times more. Even if all the sweet shops did not convert to ECF material, or did so only for select packs, the market at each consuming centres would be worth several hundred tonnes.

ITC has started its campaign with 1200 select establishments and some of them have already converted and started serving sweets using ECF material.

So far, sweets were being sold either in virgin earthenware or paper cartons made out of recycled board or board made using pulp bleached through use of chlorine, which produces the carcinogen dioxin.

Manufacturers always dealt with carton producers and never with the end-user, i.e., the sweet shop. ITC has bucked this trend by talking to food shops and convincing the shopowners and consumers alike that ECF was the right material for items like sweets.

Helping ITC in this is a a team comprising a dealer, leading food carton producers and printing agency which would normally finish food boxes.

The ITC pulp plant uses only ECF technology and is located at Bhadrachalam, Andhra Pradesh. The unit supplies ECF pulp to the company's manufacturing units at Triveni in West Bengal and Coimbatore in Kerala.

A 1kg sweet box using ECF board would cost around Rs 2.40p against Rs 2 for a 1kg box using board that was recycled or made using chlorine.

While many shops have switched over, others were resisting because they felt they would not be able to pass on the 40 paise incremental cost to the buyer and would therefore have to absorb the rise, admitted Dhobale.

To convince customers about the benefits of using ECF material, ITC would soon be launching in-shop promotions at major sweet outlets, using materials in English, Bengali and Hindi to persuade sweet buyers to ask for ECF material.

The company has already achieved success in the ice-cream segment, where major enterprises like Amul switched over easily to ECF material for its products.

"Today, nearly 80 per cent of ice-creams are packed in ECF material", Dhobale pointed out.

The basic purpose was to create awareness about hygiene and environmentally-friendly practices when buying food products, he added.

Paper and board mills can produce only ECF material and products using chlorine as a bleaching agents have to be phased out across the country by 2008.

The government has notified this change under the World Trade Organisation norms under which manufacturers can be hauled up for enjoying indirect subsidies if they produce materials not conforming to established environment standards.