75 years of waste paper in the PKV: Our raw material since 1950
For generations, PKV has relied on waste paper as a raw material and thus on sustainability and resource conservation. High quality from recycling has become the company’s brand essence.
In 1950, 75 years ago, company founder Hellmut Barthel decided to switch production on the then Kartonmaschine 1 (KM1) from peat board to cardboard made from waste paper – a material that was increasingly available at the time, was easy to process and was also cheap. This made “Halbzellstoff”, the nucleus of PKV, one of the first cardboard mills to process 100% waste paper.
Today, we receive an average of 3,300 tons of raw material every working day, which we use in 13 different qualities and which we source from 13 different countries (almost all of our purchasing volume comes from Europe, including the UK, Norway and Switzerland – and around 90 percent of the total volume even comes from within a radius of up to 500 kilometers).
After this use, all our PKV products are 100% recyclable in accordance with the EN 13430 standard. We can manufacture new products from used paper and cardboard. One paper fiber can be recycled at least 25 times.