Unfortunately, Larry would have to wait for Santa. Luckily, you don't have to wait to improve your present status. Simply insist on foil products and you can't go wrong. From festive colors to exciting embossed patterns, the shimmering beauty of foil will make your next design project sparkle no matter what the season.

Yes, Larry: there really is a Santa and there are plenty of fabulous foils for you!

For goodness' sake, don't "foil" around in learning the latest about foil and metalized polyester papers. To make your visual communications shine, be sure to read the rest of PaperView for more dazzling details on foil. Happy Holidays!

Remember when you were little and your mom made chocolate chip cookies that she'd wrap in "tin foil" for your school lunch? Come lunchtime, you knew right away that almost anything mom wrapped in shiny silver foil just had to be good.

Like mom's cookies, just about everything looks good when it's packaged in foil. From food packaging to POP displays, the applications for foil are seemingly endless. Take this holiday season for instance. You may be receiving greeting cards that have decorative foil or arrive in foil lined envelopes. Exchanging gifts? Chances are, some of the presents may be wrapped in foil. And, if you're celebrating New Year's Eve in a big way, your party hat will probably be decorated with foil.

Hazen Paper Company has been doing a good job of converting good foil for quite a while. Since 1925, the Massachusetts based company has produced unique specialty papers. According to Gretchen Lunsford, the firm's Marketing Manager, "Hazen Paper is excited to be celebrating our 75th anniversary. We look forward to our next 75 years!" Located about 90 miles west of Boston, Hazen is an industry leader in producing a variety of decorative foil laminated and paperboard materials. The company consists of three main divisions: laminating, coating and printing, and embossing.

This month's edition of PaperView is printed on Hazen Paper's 60 lb. laser printable bright gold C1S foil, a laminated foil product. Lamination is one of Hazen's major activities. Extremely thin foils, metalized polyesters, and holographic films are laminated, or glued, onto different base stocks. Stocks include C1S, SBS or substrates as light as 30 lb. to as heavy as 30 pt. board. Although Hazen has over 13 colors available including such traditional colors as bright and dull golds and silvers, they also can offer custom colors in minimum order quantities as little as 6,000 sheets of 26 x 20. For their stocking grades, 500 sheets of 26 x 40 is the minimum product order.

To understand Hazen's coating operations, imagine it's cold outside. To protect yourself from chilly temperatures, you put on a coat, right? The same logic applies to coatings that are applied to paper. Acrylic, vinyl and polyurethane are all different top coatings that Hazen applies to protect and enhance finishes. Some other special coatings include FDA approved coatings for food packaging, anti-static coating, and grease proof coatings. To alleviate frequent concerns about scratching, Hazen has even developed a line of scruff resistant coatings. Along with coating, Hazen performs color printing. With three Gravure printers, Hazen can colorize foil or film to practically any color. Attractive metallic and pearlescent pigments are available too.

Probably most striking of Hazen's product offerings, however, are their gorgeous embossed patterns. From sparkling snowflake patterns to a wide assortment of fascinating geometric patterns, Hazen's embossed accents are great for gift wrap or box wrap. When you want your next design project to look good, don't forget foil!

Foil

Weights: Paper: 30 lb. - 100 lb., Board: 8 pt. - 30 pt.

Sheet Sizes: Variable

Sheets/Carton: Variable

Colors: Assorted Golds, Assorted Silvers, Cerise, Christmas Green, Christmas Red, Copper, Evergreen, Ice Blue, Light Pink, Medium Blue, Valentine Red

Other: Assorted Coatings Available, Custom Colors Available, Recyclable.

Shown on 60 lb. Bright Gold Foil

Al Steffen

Whatever the new millennium brings, one thing will surely remain: the age old challenge of shipping products to the customer in a timely and economical fashion. Despite the latest in distribution technology, certain transportation factors like traffic congestion never seem to improve.

Fortunately, the paper industry is lucky to have people like Al Steffen, Traffic Manager for Badger Paper Mills. Since 1968, Al has been at the forefront of minimizing Badger's shipping slowdowns. In an interview with PaperView from his office in Peshtigo, Wisconsin about 50 miles north of Green Bay, Al shared some of his insights into the shipping world.

PV: With winter in the Midwest, just how much does severe weather like a major snowstorm affect Badger's shipping schedule and what, if anything, can you do to minimize such weather related delays?

AS: We advise our customers to give us some sort of advance notice, if possible, on any special rush orders. Of course, if there's a big blizzard, the whole system slows down but usually only for a day or two. Once the roads are cleared, we're back on track.

PV: Traffic congestion is obviously a problem in many of your major Midwest markets like Chicago. What do you do as a traffic planner to help minimize this problem?

AS: Since deregulation of the trucking industry in the early 1980's, we've put our business on bid. By consolidating freight carriers, our dock congestion has dropped quite a bit, so we can ship orders more efficiently. Since our customers now inventory less paper, over 95% of our shipments are just-in-time deliveries. So, like with the weather, any advance notice helps.

PV: When it comes to shipping, we've all heard the usual excuses from the "truck's broken down" to "they can't get a hold of the driver." What's the strangest shipping story you've ever encountered at Badger?

AS: I handle household moves for our employees. Several years ago, we had a new employee moving from Alberta, Canada down here. They had a full truckload of furniture. After a week, the truck hadn?t arrived. I kept checking with Mayflower, the carrier. Mayflower couldn?t find it. The truck just disappeared.

PV: Was the shipment ever found?

AS: Yes, the trailer, and all the furniture, was found abandoned at a truck stop in Billings, Montana about three months later. The truck driver, and the tractor were gone, but at least the furniture was fine!