Your loo roll just got softer

We’re always looking for ways to improve Naked Paper, whether that’s tweaking our toilet paper, refining our transportation, or adding new products to help more homes make the switch. 

Recently, we’ve made some exciting upgrades on the factory floor that will mean Naked Paper is softer than it’s ever been. So we thought we’d take the time to unroll the facts on how toilet paper is made soft, and how clever engineering can make it even softer.

Why tweak a process that already works?

If you’re already a Naked Paper customer, you know we prefer to keep things simple; we are making loo roll after all! But even in the world of toilet paper, kitchen rolls, and tissues, simplicity doesn't mean standing still. 

In fact, with the clever new machinery at the factory, Naked Paper is more simple than ever, with fewer ingredients and less fluff (quite literally). 

Here’s what we’ve changed.

Making toilet paper with water lamination

Naked Paper bamboo and recycled toilet rolls are 2-ply, meaning that each sheet is composed of two very thin sheets that have been sandwiched together. 

Previously, we used a vegan adhesive derived from pine resin to gently bind the plys. While we were glad to be making toilet paper with plant-based glues instead of gelatin or PVA, any type of glue naturally interacts with the fibres of your raw materials, shortening and damaging them ever so slightly in the process. This can make the paper feel just a little bit less soft than if the fibres were left entirely intact.

So we’ve switched from glue to water, with new water lamination machinery.

Water lamination follows the same principles as the basic paper-making process that’s been the same for centuries; cellulose bonding. If you make a pulp of plant material wet, and then dry it under pressure, the pulp will stick together. 

This works brilliantly for tissue making because it leaves absolutely no residue like you would get with glue. As our plies of bleach-free tissue are fed together, a thin layer of water is sprayed onto them. The water temporarily loosens the bonds between the plant fibres in our pulp, and as they dry, new bonds form. Hey presto, two single plies have become one two-ply roll. .

Because this process doesn't leave residue or damage the original fibres, they stay the same length and consistency they were before, making soft, strong, Naked Paper.

Upping our tissue crepe

That’s the binding, but what about the tissue itself? How are those two plys made soft in the first place? To understand our next upgrade, we need to talk about a vital step in the paper-making process: creping.

Once our pulp has been blasted with very hot air and fully dried, a special creping blade scrapes it off the drying surface. The scraping makes the finished paper buckle slightly, forming millions of tiny micro-folds that turn the surface of each sheet into a miniature landscape of hills and valleys.

These micro-folds are the difference between paper you’d use for writing or wrapping, and paper you’d use for drying. They “puff up” the tissue, making it feel noticeably fluffier and softer.

At this stage, we have some options. We can increase the size and density of these folds by adjusting the angle or pressure of the scraping blade, but it's a delicate balancing act. Increasing the crepe will generally work to reduce the overall strength of the tissue.

Thanks to our new machinery, we're able to fine-tune this balance perfectly, giving  maximum fluffiness without losing strength.

But there’s another catch to increasing the crepe level: more micro-folds usually mean more paper dust for the factory to deal with. Enter… 

Our new dust-busting extractor hood

You might have noticed that Naked Paper toilet rolls tend to give off much less tissue “dust” than conventional alternatives, which helps keep your skin itch-free and your bathroom spick and span. And keeping dust low is really important at the factory; dust in the air will quickly become dust in the machinery, and that can cause all manner of tissue troubles. 

To allow us to increase the softness without creating a cloud of unwanted dust around our factory or in your loo we’ve installed a brand-new dust-extraction system.

This specialised hood sits directly over the machine that winds the rolls and sucks up any stray dust particles as they form like a giant vacuum cleaner. This way, we can crank up the creping while keeping the air in the factory and the bleach-free rolls in your box clean and dust-free.

That’s all (for now…)

As long as we’re rolling, we might as well roll forwards. 

Adjustments like these have been part of the picture since we started Naked Paper. They mean our tissue changes over time, but our goal remains the same; keeping our impact low and our quality high.

One change completed means a new project on the horizon. There are more improvements coming in the next few months, we’ll be back with another update before you can say “bleach free loo roll.”

Okay, maybe not that fast. 

For now, if you have any questions about how we make Naked Paper, we'd love to hear from you. And if you simply want to try these new water-glued, extra-crepped, dust free rolls for yourself head over to our shop.