Cardinal Tissue focuses on product innovation and using the latest technology

Being one of the newer converters in the industry for the North American market, Cardinal Tissue is a specialized contract tissue manufacturer that provides best in class tissue suppliers with solutions for contract converting and supply chain optimization.

The company invests in new technologies and equipment to ensure an optimized production process and products that meet market demands. During the Talk Tissue with Brian Uzcategui, Vince Reese, CEO of Cardinal Tissue, discussed their mission of supporting the tissue industry in general.

“We work very close with Körber and their child companies, such as Perini and Langhammer, doing some work with their equipment and making it accessible to customers,” he said.

There seems to be a trend happening in the tissue industry. The new startups like Cardinal Tissue are starting to choose locations in the southeast, such as North Carolina. There are several companies around the area that are also converting tissue products and Reese explained what made him select NC to base Cardinal Tissue.

“I’ve been of the opinion that the Southeast is the new Green Bay. If you look at the papermaking capacity, that’s been installed in the southeast. Anyone that has done any type of site search selection, certainly the proximity to market is a pretty big deal. Eastern seaboard, as transportation costs have increased over the years, having products that are getting produced closer to their end landing spot is more and more important.”

“When we were starting to think about doing this, I saw a lot of the bigger companies and paper machines and that happening, but a lot of the tier one stuff and the support, roll covering, you go to Green Bay and see all kinds of small companies and all kinds of roll covering and embossing design. That kind of stuff is starting to bloom down here as well.”

When discussing the product range, Vince mentioned that, with the Cardinal brand, they started with a regular premium 12-pack toilet paper that the company added some innovations such as the case and a carrying handle. Also, through this brand, they offer the premium paper towel and napkin, all designed together as a family of products.

The napkin production is new for the company. “We started doing folded products last year and have napkin availability that we do in our control label and for some private label,” he explained.

Sustainability is a big deal for Cardinal Tissue and they are applying some strategies and innovations to assure the lowest carbon footprint possible.

“We spend a lot of time on that, not only on the outside, but on the inside with hybrids sheets and different variations of recycled products, alternative fibers and putting multiple plies together,” Vince says. “Sustainability is a real focus of what we do as a company, using tier one state-of-the-art, best in class, equipment.”

The future looks bright for Cardinal Tissue, that is investing in facial products and on new technology for warehouse automation, to meet the market demands.

“We’ve got a couple high-speed constellation swing lines running, as well as a folded line. We’d also like to introduce a high-speed facial tissue line,” Vince explained. “We have a pocket facial line and want to have all the categories of tissue and different levels of quality, so when OEMs bring customers in to take a look at what the capabilities are that we’re able to demonstrate that more than anything.”

“Certainly, we’ll have the ability to add additional world capacity here, as the market demands, and we’ll fill out some type of facial capability over the next few years.”

Reese also mentioned his thoughts on how this second tissue products scarcity has been different from the first one, in 2020. He also shared some insights about a permanent shift in the AFH products to retail, costs, importation, prices and how to meet customers demand during this time.

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