Tissue Paper Converting: Scott Rolls to ABB Robots

Tissue paper converting is the part of the industry most people never see. A tissue machine makes huge parent rolls, also called jumbo rolls, and a converting line turns them into the toilet rolls, kitchen towels and facial tissues that end up in shops and washrooms. This post follows that work from the first packaged toilet paper and Scott's rolls of the 1890s, through rewinders and log saws, to the robots that now case, bundle and stack finished packs. Along the way it looks at where ABB palletizers, delta robots and mobile robots could fit, and at what still holds automation back.

Toilet rolls moving along the production line at Hakle's plant in Düsseldorf. Photo: Hakle GmbH / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How toilet paper went from flat sheets to Scott rolls

Before tissue was a product, people used whatever was at hand, from corncobs to old newspapers and mail order catalogues. Joseph Gayetty is widely credited with the first modern commercial toilet paper in the United States. His Medicated Paper, introduced in 1857, came in packages of flat sheets watermarked with his name, and it was still on sale in the 1920s. In 1883 Seth Wheeler of Albany, New York, obtained the earliest US patents for toilet paper and for dispensers of the kinds that later became common.

A Century of Progress: corncobs, newspaper and a catalogue beside a roll of toilet paper. Photo: Unknown photographer via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Rolls arrived with the Scott Paper Company, which the brothers E. Irvin Scott and Clarence Scott founded in Philadelphia in 1879. Toilet paper on a roll caught on after Scott began marketing it in 1890, and the company added paper towels in 1907 and paper tissues in the 1930s. Quality took a while to catch up. As late as the 1930s the Northern Tissue company still advertised its toilet paper as splinter free. Kimberly-Clark launched Kleenex in 1924 as a cold cream remover, and only later did it become a disposable handkerchief.

Views of the Scott Paper Company plant in Chester, Pennsylvania, 1914. Photo: H.V. Smith via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Converting soon became a job for machines, and the basic sequence has changed little since. A parent roll from the tissue machine is unwound on a rewinder, which can emboss and perforate the sheet and wind it onto cardboard cores as long logs. A log saw cuts each log across into individual rolls. Wrappers, bundlers and case packers then put the rolls into packs and cartons, which are stacked on pallets. Products kept getting softer; in 1942 St Andrew Mills in Walthamstow brought two ply toilet paper to Britain, the product that became Andrex. For decades, though, people did much of the packing and stacking at the end of the line by hand.

A tissue converting machine with a jumbo roll loaded, ready to turn it into smaller rolls. Photo: Sammutawe / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Tissue converting lines and robots today

The front of a modern converting line is fast and largely automated, and the industry is still investing in it. In October 2026 Tissue Online North America reported that Sunset Converting plans a 30 million dollar investment in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec. Benoit Laferrière, Jean Jobin and Mathieu Laferrière founded the company in 2020 to supply private label away from home tissue to redistributors in Canada and the United States, and Körber has described its plant running Perini MyLine and Proxima converting lines. The same month, PULPAPERnews covered Maflex's new LADON Evo industrial log saw.

An ABB IRB 660 palletizing robot stacking boxed products at the end of a line. Photo: ABB

Robots mostly work at the end of the line. Tissue packs are light and bulky and they arrive quickly, so lifting them by hand all shift is tiring, repetitive work. Layer palletizers, such as the W+D Langhammer machines, and robot palletizers stack whole layers of packs at a time. ABB's IRB 460 is a compact four axis palletizer for high speed end of line work, which ABB rates at up to 2,190 cycles per hour. The larger IRB 660 is a general purpose palletizer with a longer reach, and ABB offers vacuum grippers for light and medium cases and clamp grippers for heavier ones.

A W+D Langhammer PA 8 layer palletizer, which stacks whole layers of packs at once. Photo: MirjamMelanieMueller / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

We found no published case of an ABB robot in a tissue converting plant, so this is a possible fit based on what these robots do on other packaging lines. An IRB 360 FlexPicker could pick soft packs or single rolls from a conveyor into cartons, and an IRB 460 or IRB 660 could stack the cartons and bundles at the end. Pallet patterns for robots like these are usually planned in RobotStudio. Our post on paper roll handling covers the heavy parent rolls that feed a converting line.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker robots packing small items into boxes at high speed. Photo: ABB

What comes next for tissue converting

In factories, the next step is fewer manual touches between the rewinder and the truck. Converting lines switch products often, from two ply bath tissue to kitchen towel and from retail packs to large away from home rolls, and every switch brings new pack sizes and pallet patterns. A robot that loads a stored pattern copes with that more easily than a fixed machine built for one format. Autonomous mobile robots such as ABB's Flexley Mover could carry cores, packaging and finished loads between machines and the warehouse, a job forklifts often do today.

The ABB Flexley Mover P604, which navigates with 3D Visual SLAM. Photo: ABB

Homes will feel these changes only indirectly, through price and availability. The rush on toilet paper in 2020 showed how fast demand can jump when people stock up, and how hard it is to add capacity at short notice. More automation at the end of converting lines would let plants run extra shifts without finding more people for the heaviest and most repetitive jobs. It will not make parent rolls any faster, because the tissue machine sets the pace for the whole mill.

A cupboard packed with toilet paper during the 2020 stockpiling. Photo: Mwinog2777 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Cost is the first hurdle in a low margin product, and a small converter has to weigh a robot cell against cheaper fixed equipment. Safety around fast palletizers is another, which is why cells need guarding or tools such as SafeMove to limit speed and zones when people come close. Skills may be the hardest to solve. Tissue plants need technicians who can program and maintain robots as well as rewinders, and simpler tools such as no code robot programming are one way to lower that barrier.

An ABB four-axis palletizing robot with a layer gripper in a packaging line cell. Photo: ABB

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