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Packaging industry's raw material producers face continuous challenges of sustainable development. Besides raw material and energy consumption mitigation, essential functions of product protection must be maintained. Re-use and recycling of waste materials must be provided, which is required by the European Union directives as well. Multi-beverage carton recycling is even more difficult due to the use of various materials, due to their diverse properties and qualities. The introduced paper is part of a complex study, which aims to prove that utilizing dry-grinding technology and no additives, semi-finished products can be produced for the packaging industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the folding process substrates are exposed to high-localized stresses, which in the case of coated papers and boards, can lead to decreased aesthetic features or complete loss of functionality. Production efficiency of the folding process could be improved by an automated, computer vision-based inspection system. For such a task, different existing computer-aided fold-crack evaluation approaches were analyzed. A detailed research was conducted to propose an image processing based fold cracking assessment via finding optimal sample preparation and digitization techniques and developing an algorithm for the digital image analysis and feature extraction. The analysis of the applicability of different sample preparation and digitization parameters, as well as the proposed digital image feature, was done by correlation evaluation, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and corresponding post hoc tests. The results indicated that the developed algorithm fulfils the set requirements and the proposed feature of digitized samples faithfully describes the analyzed fold-cracks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]