Types And Properties Of Tissue Paper
For a food business, it is common to have disposable cutlery wrapped in tissue paper inside a ziplock pouch given with disposable meal trays. Tissue paper is also given with sweet boxes and cake boxes to customers. Not only these but facial tissue paper, tissue paper for use in kitchens and toilet tissue paper are also included in this broad category of tissue paper.
Tissue paper has various properties which set it apart from other types of paper. Here are the properties:
Tissue Paper Property #1: Absorbency
This property of tissue paper comes from its roughness. The rougher the tissue paper is, the more capacity it has to absorb liquids. This is often the reason why some types of tissue paper are rougher than others.
Tissue Paper Property #2: Basis Weight
Basis weight is a term used in fabric and paper industry to denote the amount of mass per unit area. Basis weight of tissue paper is its weight for a certain number of sheets. For tissue paper, this number usually comes down to about 480 sheets.
Tissue Paper Property #3: Thickness or Caliper
Caliper is a measurement of the thickness of tissue paper. As the density of paper is usually not known directly, it is measured using a caliper. Caliper for tissue paper is often the same across different brands as tissue paper does not vary much in thickness. Caliper is measured in micrometers.
Tissue Paper Property #4: Brightness
The brightness of tissue paper is an optical property. Brightness is measured along with colour under indoor and outdoor lighting conditions. This is done as there are certain international standards which are to be met while manufacturing tissue paper. There are different standards in place for the brightness of different types of tissue paper so single-ply tissue paper would have a different brightness than multi-ply tissue paper.
Tissue Paper Property #5: Stretch
The stretchability of tissue paper comes from a process called crepe control in the manufacturing of tissue paper. The sheet of tissue paper is stuck to a dryer surface and then compacted to make microfolds on the sheet which is what makes it stretchable and consequently, soft.
Tissue Paper Property #6: Appearance
One of the most important properties of any product is its appearance. This also goes for tissue paper as the appearance of tissue paper is very important to customers. Consumers would be hesitant to use tissue papers which are unattractive or unappealing in some way due to its appearance.
Tissue Paper Property #7: Comfort
Comfort, of course, is what makes tissue paper different from other types of paper. Nobody would opt for a newspaper to wipe their hands over tissue paper. This is because tissue paper has been designed specifically while keeping in mind that they be comfortable to use.
This has been an overview of the major properties of tissue paper. There are some other properties which are also taken into consideration, depending on the particular type of tissue paper used, but by and large, these properties are the standard considerations for manufacturers of tissue paper.