Carbonless Copy Paper

Carbonless Copy Paper is the modern day equivalent to the old fashioned (and often messy) blue Carbon Copy Paper.

In the printing industry Carbonless Copy Paper is more commonly referred to as NCR Paper, so if you hear this term, it’s the same product. The acronym NCR stands for NCarbon Required, which simply means the blue carbon sheet is no longer needed.

Carbonless Copy Paper

How does it work?

Essentially Carbonless Copy Paper does exactly the same as Carbon Copy Paper, allowing you to duplicate what you are writing, although it is the unique, invisible coating on the paper you are writing on that now allows the copy to be made.

The back of the top sheet of paper is coated with micro-encapsulated dye (known as a CB sheet – Coated Back). The bottom sheet is coated on the front surface with a clay that reacts with the dye from the top sheet (known as a CF sheet – Coated Front). Any additional sheets required in between are coated with clay on the front and dye on the back (known as a CFB Sheet – Coated Front & Back).

When the top sheet is written on, the pressure from the pen (or impact from a dot-matrix printer) causes the micro-capsules to break and release their dye on to the clay coated side. As the capsules are miniature, the resulting duplicate is an accurate copy of what has been written above.

Paper Colours

Carbonless Copy Paper is available in a selection of colours; white/yellow/pink/green/blue and can be collated in any order required, as long as the correct coated paper is used. For example, a CF sheet – Coated Front will not copy down on to a CB sheet – Coated Back, as a side note; if you come acrosss paper that is ‘not working’, 9 times out of 10 it has been collated in the wrong order or one of the sheets is the wrong way round.

Paper Weights

Available in a selection of paper weights, the choice of paper is usually dictated by the print run length and printing press being used. For example, long run jobs are more cost effectively produced on a reel-fed printing press, this is a printing press that uses paper from a roll, these typically use 53/57/60/80gsm. Shorter runs are generally produced on both litho and digital sheet-fed printing presses, these are printing presses that use sheets of paper, litho presses typically run 75gsm and digital presses 80gsm.

Other weights of Carbonless Copy Paper are available, on occasion when requested we may run a heavier bottom copy / CF sheet such as 170gsm, this is only available in white & chamois (creamy/yellow colour). If you would like your top copy / CB sheet to be any colour other than white then this is only available as 60gsm.

NCR Printing

We specialise in NCR Printing, essentially printing on to Carbonless Copy Paper / NCR Paper, the sheets can be custom printed with whatever you require and are typically used for invoices, quotes, receipts and anything else where you require a copy/copies of what is being written. These can then be supplied as NCR Pads, NCR Books or Loose NCR Sets.

If you have a requirement for such an item then we are sure that we can help, please give us a call on: 0330 111 5040