Paper Recycling Supplement--Ironing Out the Specifics

INDIVIDUAL NEEDS. The main issue that our customers have always wanted was an understanding of their mill-specific grades. It could be groundwood levels or pressure-sensitive adhesives, which are a big issue now in office pack because of legislation like HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) that requires those documents to be destroyed. Certainly ink tolerance and types of inks [also vary by mill].

Qualifying samples have turned out to be one of the easiest ways to maintain a good relationship with a customer. Typically a one- or two-pound sample is what’s required for lab tests.

We like to provide digital photos and have always tried to insist that digital photos not only establish quality of paper, but that they also establish the bale integrity. If the mill buyer has an opportunity to see how nicely they stack in someone’s warehouse, they believe that they’ll stack in theirs. Safety is always a big issue for the mills.

The supporting documentation is also important. [Mills] certainly want to know who the generators are. We do supply tags to our accounts. We like the mills knowing they came from us and the suppliers that generated them. They also need to know other information, like pickup addresses. The mills typically try to coordinate the transportation logistics themselves. Certainly, they also need the contact person at the account, phone and fax numbers. It’s important that they be able to get on the phone and contact somebody if there’s an emergency, if a truck is delayed or if additional loads are required.

Certainly accounting information for payables is always important to get correct: a contact person, established terms, etc.

LINES OF COMMUNICATION. The suppliers have their own particular needs. They want to understand the material they’re generating is actually mill-specific—[that] they have a grade the mill wants. And it’s not just the PSI standards that we’ve discovered mill customers need, they may have some special requirements, like something less than a groundwood content in a PSI standard. They’re also concerned about things like ultra violets and things like pressure-sensitive adhesives—that has been in the last nine months probably the No. 1 quality issue that we have faced on grades that we ship.

I really enjoy having a library of digital photos to send to our customers. When they’re able to see loose and baled forms of raw materials, it answers a lot of questions.

Supporting documentation, again, is important for suppliers. They certainly want to understand they have a legitimate purchase order [and] what the pricing is. They’re going to need manifests [and] release numbers so there is no confusion on who shipped a load, who needs to be paid and what the weight requirements are on a shipment.

You don’t like to charge people back, so you try to make these requirements known and clear from the beginning.

I notice that I have received recently a number of mills’ requirements to certify we’ve actually trained accounts on how to load a truck. They don’t want to receive a load that is dangerous for their employees to unload.

Communicating what customers are expecting and what suppliers need to know in order to get the specifics right is really important.

The accounting information is absolutely important. Suppliers want to be paid for loads they shipped. They like to be paid in a timely manner, so they need to understand who to talk to in the receivables department and to establish net terms, etc.

We are always concerned about safety. Our mill customers, the suppliers, and unfortunately, a lot of us here do know about tragedies that have happened in the industry. Safety [and] loading diagrams are always important. A supplier certainly needs to understand those documents; they don’t want to do everything right on processing, do everything right on testing, meet the customer specs and then have a miscommunication on how to load a truck and find that the load has been rejected by the mill. Such documents can easily be transmitted across the Internet.

We do a lot of teaching over the Internet. Recently, I taught a class to some government agencies and the like. We enjoy sending information that people understand. I’m going to use a grade of office pack as an example. If we’re buying PSI grade 37, sorted office pack, it may not be the total mill requirement in that published specification. A particular mill may want zero plastic windowed envelopes. That’s a pretty tall order on an office pack grade. They may want a lesser content of groundwood then a PSI standard. They may also ask for a minimum quality of white ledger. We certainly have mills that will take 100 percent colored, but some can’t. So, communicating what that spec is is critical. I don’t like to have loads rejected because we didn’t communicate our mill customers’ needs.

There are also requirements on office pack for shredded content. If anyone here is exporting, you know a typical question is, "Does your office pack have shredded material?" The moment you say 100 percent, they say "maximum 20." We try to communicate that in a category called "additional mill requirements." It’s easy to transmit. Within minutes it’s on your computer [and] you see what the customer is asking for. A picture is worth a thousand words in many cases.

A customer will always want to know that a supplier has been visited or has received samples so that they can do lab evaluation.

On the other side of the table, a generator/supplier really likes the physical visit to go over the grades that it generates, the equipment it has, the type of bales it produces, the cleanliness of those bales and that it can ship a product that won’t have any rejections or downgrades.

Digital photos work wonderfully for the customers—they absolutely love having them.

Even in conversations I had about putting this session together, a couple of our customers agreed that they were going to start their own digital photo libraries. Digital photos are very easy to take and to send … so it’s an easy way to get that information and a very fast way to get that to a customer.

A PICTURE OF SUCCESS. I’ll emphasize relationship issues between suppliers and customers, because it’s very important. I titled this one "suppliers are from Venus and mills are from Mars." Now I probably owe Dr. Gray a compliment for butchering the title of his book, but it really is about relationships and communication.