articles/Paper/sugarcane-page1
by Mike McNamee Published 01/04/2009
The Sugar Cane livery has a distinctly West Indian feel to it!
As the name suggests, this is a paper made from sugar cane fibres, indeed it is the first art paper to be made in this way. It continues from Hahnemuhle Bamboo as part of that company's 'Environmental Initiative' under their Green Rooster banner. Through this scheme, each time you buy a product the company makes a donation to an environmental project. We showed with Bamboo that you sacrifice absolutely nothing by going to a greener, more sustainable source and so we were curious to seen how Sugar Cane would get on.
Sugar Cane, on the right, has more texture than Bamboo, on the left.
Base Material
Sugar Cane is made from 75% sugar cane fibres mixed in with 25% of trimmings from other parts of the Hahnemuhle production. This is quite normal in the paper industry, the value of pulp is such that it is well worthwhile to recycle trimmings back into the pulping mix.
Sugar Cane is a natural white, lightly textured material with no added OBAs and is certified archival grade and acid free.
It sits well alongside Bamboo as the texture is quite different although the underlying ethical approach is the same. The base is 300gsm with a calliper of 503microns. It is quite stiff in feel. Under UV light there is some speckling, presumably due to the odd fibre from the trimmings, an effect we have noted before on other Hahnemuhle products. The colour tone is just a couple of points warm of neutral.
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