Foam forming: What could it mean for tissue?

Foam forming technology introduces new and exciting opportunities for manufacturing paper, board, tissue and other fibre based products. It enables production of very high porosity structures, which can be used in light-weighting, and possibilities to develop totally new fibre-based products. Foam forming also offers a way to remarkably reduce production costs and simultaneously improve properties of current products. Compared to traditional water forming technology the forming consistency may be increased substantially with foam. Foam forming also widens remarkably the raw material choice, especially the usage of long fibres. This paper highlights the recent developments especially from the tissue point of view and introduces the research facilities available for studying foam forming at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. In general, foam forming enables production of structures with high bulk and excellent formation. The main advantage for tissue comes through improved formation, which at low basis weights leads to significant increase in strength.