A New Gear

November 6, 2026

Faster machines, smarter controls, and new approaches to sheet production are expanding box plant possibilities

In a fast-paced, competitive marketplace, today’s corrugators are keeping pace by making strides in speed, efficiency, and safety.

From AI-driven analysis to the market entry of cold corrugators, innovations are making advanced corrugators more accessible and solutions-driven. Today’s innovations introduce smarter safety systems that reduce reboot requirements, automate to alleviate operator shortages and improve consistency, and predictive maintenance to maximize equipment.

As the North American corrugator market stabilizes from its COVID-era volatility, OEMs can hit fast-forward on innovations, says Ted Kulwicki, director of North American corrugator sales, BW Papersystems.

“It’s good to see supply chain has recovered,” he says. “Our ability to get parts and manufacture efficiently is a lot better than it was a couple of years ago.”

Automation Advantages

As AI weaves into every aspect of life and commerce, corrugator manufacturers are seizing the power to give machines a kind of mindfulness that helps alleviate risk, fill labor shortages, reduce waste, and lessen downtime.

At BW Papersystems, newly introduced innovations are making corrugators easier and safer to run by transferring some decision powers from operators to automation. For instance, their new safety system, The Guardian, might block access if a lock or guard isn’t in place and put an area in a safe state at the operator’s request—all without bringing the system’s brain to a halt so the equipment can return to production more quickly.

“That makes it a lot easier to work safely and a lot more efficiently and also brings the machines back up online a little bit faster,” says Kulwicki. “After the operator is done, he leaves the machine, closes the machine, resets the machine, and the machine is ready to go again. It allows some of the systems to keep running in the background.”

In an atmosphere where every opportunity for human error harbors safety risk, “we’re taking that control and putting it into the machine,” he adds. “The safety aspect will certainly get machines up running faster by being smarter about how we’re locking machines out. The automation will allow machine changes to happen sooner rather than waiting for a product to get to the other end of the corrugator and signaling back to the wet end that things need to be changed. Those things that can be done automatically will certainly improve production, improve efficiency, and reduce waste.”

AI can also help fill the shoes of veteran operators—the ones primed by decades of experience to make adjustments based on machine sounds or changes in output—who are retiring. Automation bridges the knowledge gap, making crucial decisions while also attracting and retaining the young talent eager for jobs steeped in technology. “They grew up with computers and electronics, and not valves,” says Kulwicki. “They’re expecting that level of automation.”

Corrugator manufacturers are also leveraging AI’s powers of predictive maintenance to move maintenance beyond traditional time- and usage-based schedules. Today’s corrugators can monitor production and machine conditions to anticipate and avert breakdowns or malfunctions.

“We’re able to measure production and measure condition of the actual machines and parts of the machines to do a much more accurate and predictive maintenance schedule,” says Kulwicki. “It makes it a lot smarter than just going based on a time system.”

Automation on corrugators “is growing every day,” says Todd Evans, vice president of sales at Fosber America. “AI-driven supervisory controllers reduce the onus on the facility of making sure that they’re fully staffed, that someone shows up on time, that callouts aren’t as punitive as if you have a manual machine.”

On the operational efficiency side, one Fosber partnership is providing automatic guided vehicles as an alternative to manned clamp trucks for transporting paper rolls to corrugators. While the technology improves safety and reduces operational labor, it also creates additional maintenance requirements.

The “next frontier” in AI is looking beyond motor characteristics toward process data, Evans says. As an example, AI analysis could explain why two passes of one job fell short of speeds reached on a third run, offering suggestions on making up the gap and maximizing square footage produced. By analyzing board-grade recipes, starch, tension, moisture, and other variables, AI could recommend settings that improve speed and production output.

“This is the next leap,” Evans says. “We’ll all get there. We’re working on it right now.”

The Need for Speed

A perennial driver of corrugator innovation is the need to increase production without drastic cost increases, says Evans. As Fosber America looks toward the next performance level, the plan for 2027 is a corrugator amping up feet per minute from the current 1,500 to 1,650.

“As we go forward, there will always be increases in speed from all the suppliers of corrugators in the market,” says Evans. “We’re all on a mission for top performance, top speed.”

Achieving that goal combines old-fashioned attention to increasing horsepower and boosting transmissions while leveraging technology innovations for maintaining efficient process controls for temperature and tension at higher speeds, Evans says.

Achieving higher speeds depends on controlling paper temperature and tension, using starch efficiently, and maintaining process stability, he says. In turn, manufacturers are managing the forces generated by faster operation through stronger transmissions, greater horsepower, and mechanical balancing.

“Everything’s turning in a corrugator, so as you go faster you have to be able to balance the paper web control,” Evans says. “The machine’s got to get more stout. It’s got to get stronger to support those speeds.”

On the printing front, advances in digital printing allow corrugators to conduct applications historically associated with litho-laminated packaging, Evans says. Fosber’s Quantum corrugator is a wider, faster, more efficient alternative for micro-flute production, capable of contactless application of registered, single-color marks to corrugated webs before the material is cut to width and length specs.

While not yet suitable for multiple-color jobs, it can print unique individual marks and be changed on the fly. Uses being explored include certification stamps, routing information, unique barcodes, and QR codes, with potential benefits for plant flexibility, distribution-center operations, and supply chain traceability.

“Each symbol could be something different,” Evans says. “You’re not restricted to which machine you have to route this sheet to in your plant, and you have more flexibility to make it and convert it into a box.”

Multicolor digital printing is possible but costly because each color requires a separate print bar, he adds, so monochrome offers a practical, cost-efficient entry point into digital printing.

Strategic Upgrades

Fortunately for plants that make the investment, corrugators are not monoliths that require full replacement when they’re obsolete or inefficient. As systems comprising a dozen or more separate modules, they can be fully replaced or partially, one or two machines at a time. Controls can also be upgraded as needed, extracting greater efficiencies from individual pieces of the line.

Potential improvements might replace obsolete components, add heat or steam capabilities, increase speed, or customize machine dimensions to fit plant layouts and space limitations.

“Every situation is different,” says Kulwicki. “Some people may need a full corrugator. Some people may need half of a corrugator, and some may need just one piece to that puzzle. There’s not a one-size-fits-all solution to these problems. Our team is able to work with the customers, really understand what the problem is, and put together a custom solution to their problem.”

At BW Papersystems, custom machinery that accommodates space limitations or other needs “has been in our DNA for a long time,” Kulwicki adds. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all, right-out-of-the-box solution.”

While many box plants can’t justify investments in complete, new corrugator systems, they can keep pace with the pressure of market demands by installing state-of-the-art supervisory and process controllers, says Evans. Controls on any or all of the individual machines can be upgraded to maximize temperatures, starch applications, and predictive maintenance.

“If you don’t keep this system up to date and install the latest technology, you lose out on the capability for all these ancillary devices that you need for a state-of-the-art system,” he says. “It’s being able to take the next step into AI to assist you with operations. Systems that are much older won’t have this capability to integrate with the next step.”

Cold Corrugators

Cold corrugating technology has arrived in North America with the Interpac ECO Flute 1250 Cold Corrugator. Advocates say it empowers independent sheet plants to take greater control of their corrugated sheet supplies.

Whitebird/Moyy installed North America’s first Interpac Cold Corrugator in Hamilton, Ontario. Following the installation, Whitebird/Moyy Vice President of Corporate Strategy and AICC Canada President George Perreira became involved with Interpac North America, helping introduce and support the technology throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Unlike a conventional corrugator, the Interpac Cold Corrugator does not require steam, a boiler system, or a starch kitchen. Instead, it uses a cold-set PVA adhesive system. While the machine incorporates heat plates within the corrugating process, eliminating the need for steam and a starch kitchen significantly reduces the infrastructure traditionally associated with bringing corrugating in-house.

“Interpac asked: How do we make a corrugator that’s small enough to fit in a traditional box plant?” Perreira says. “How do we give an independent sheet plant the ability to produce its own sheets without having to put in major foundations, a boiler room, and a starch kitchen?”

As the corrugated industry becomes increasingly vertically integrated, independent sheet plants continue to rely heavily on outside suppliers for their corrugated sheets, but the Cold Corrugator can change that equation, Perreira says.

“When you depend entirely on someone else for your sheets, you’re also depending on them for your lead times, availability, and ultimately part of the experience you provide your customer,” he says. “Bringing corrugating in-house gives an independent converter greater control over those things.”

At about 50 inches in width, the Interpac ECO Flute 1250 was designed around the needs of independent sheet plants rather than attempting to replicate the size and production volumes of traditional high-speed corrugators.

The machine is about 100 feet long by 20 feet wide and bolts to the plant floor without requiring major foundation work. It can run up to about 50 meters per minute and produce B, C, and E flute board in kraft, white, and coated-white combinations.

The technology can also produce flatter sheets with reduced warp and washboarding—particularly for single-pass digital printing, where sheet quality and flatness can directly affect production performance, Perreira says.

With interchangeable flute cartridges and a relatively compact footprint, the system is designed to give independent converters flexibility in determining which portion of their sheet requirements it makes sense to produce internally.

That control can give sheet plants greater flexibility to respond to customers, manage production schedules, shorten lead times, and reduce their dependence on outside sheet suppliers.

“This technology gives the everyday independent sheet plant an opportunity to take back control of its sheet supply,” Perreira says. “It allows them to become more vertically integrated, protect the customer experience, and compete in a market where many of the largest players already control their own board supply.”