(UPM, Helsinki, September 18, 2006) - UPM organized a survey initialized by the UPM Research Centre at IPEX Trade Fair 2006 in UK to evaluate how end-users judge paper by its sensory features. In addition to the traditional visual properties, the consumer panel reviewed also the sound, browsing, posture and overall pleasantness of two different paper grades.
"I was a little bit surprised that such a high figure as 30 % of the evaluators weighted easy browsing and posture as the most important paper characters. Around 60 % found the visual appearance to be the most important quality of paper" tells Senior Researcher Matti Ristolainen.
The result underlines an assumption that paper should not only look but also feel, smell and sound attractive by the end-user point of view.
The panel used 60 pages magazines without covers as the test examples. The magazines were RG printed on LWC and SC paper grades. The magazines printed on uncoated paper were considered very agreeable to browse and pleasant to read. Those printed on coated paper were weighted by the print quality and gloss.
"The consumer panel test was something new in the paper business. Therefore, the approach emerged a lot of positive attention among those who participated in the survey" adds Dr. Ristolainen.
