Did you know2024
Glatfelter's tea bag filter paper and Bible paper both depend on abaca fiber — the leaf stalk fiber of Musa textilis, a non-edible banana relative grown almost exclusively in the Philippines — which simultaneously provides the raw material for three seemingly unrelated product categories. Abaca fiber, unique for combining extreme tensile strength, low weight, and wet strength that other cellulosic fibers lack, is: (1) the filter paper in Lipton, Twinings, and Tetley tea bags that withstands boiling water without disintegrating; (2) the lightweight, opaque, durable pages of the Gideon Bible placed in every US hotel room, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the US Tax Code; and (3) the currency paper fiber in banknotes of at least 20 countries globally (the Bank of England pound, the Euro, and others incorporate abaca to improve wet strength and circulation longevity). Philippines abaca production (~95% of world supply, concentrated in Davao del Norte and Catanduanes provinces) is therefore simultaneously the supply chain foundation for global tea drinking, religious and legal publishing, and dozens of nations' physical currency. A typhoon season disrupting abaca harvests in the Philippines would affect morning tea for European consumers, Bible printing for global religious markets, and banknote production for multiple central banks simultaneously.
Glatfelter Corporation (now Magnera) ↗
Substitution2024
The tea bag is quietly being redesigned over a microplastics scare. Many modern tea bags — especially the "silky" pyramid sachets, but also conventional ones sealed with a thin plastic layer — contain polypropylene, PET or other plastics, and research showing that a single plastic tea bag can shed billions of microplastic and nanoplastic particles into a hot cup triggered consumer alarm and regulatory pressure. That pushed the industry toward plastic-free, fully biodegradable tea bags — using plant-based PLA or heat-sealable papers that need no plastic sealant — and makers of the base material like Glatfelter/Magnera have developed plastic-free, compostable grades in response. So a food-safety and environmental concern about an everyday product is reshaping its hidden material, with the upstream paper-and-nonwoven specialists re-engineering the bag itself. It's the same pattern as tethered caps, low-migration inks and PFAS-free finishes: a narrow concern about contamination or waste cascades into reformulating a ubiquitous item, executed by suppliers most consumers never see. [verify: Plastic tea-bag microplastic study (billions particles) + PLA transition confirmed]
Glatfelter / Magnera ↗
Concentration2024
Glatfelter and Ahlstrom (Finland) together supply approximately 60-70% of the global tea bag filter paper market using abaca fiber from the Philippines. The tea bag filter paper supply chain is doubly concentrated: at the converting level (two primary suppliers) and at the raw material level (Philippines abaca). The commercial tea bag is a deceptively simple product with a fragile supply chain: it must brew efficiently, withstand immersion in boiling water without disintegrating, be food-contact safe, and — in heat-seal tea bags — bond reliably at high-speed tea bag filling machine speeds. The specific porosity and wet-strength characteristics of abaca-based filter paper are matched to the tea bags and filling machinery of Unilever (Lipton), Tata (Tetley), Associated British Foods (Twinings), and the private-label co-packers that supply every supermarket's own-brand tea. Switching tea bag paper suppliers requires requalification on the filling machine (bag formation consistency) and flavor testing (absence of off-flavors in the brewed tea) — a 6-12 month process. Glatfelter's position in the tea supply chain is as structurally stable as its position in baby wipes, but far less visible.
Glatfelter Corporation (now Magnera) ↗
Origin2024
P.H. Glatfelter Company was founded in 1864 in Spring Grove, Pennsylvania by Philip Henry Glatfelter, who purchased a small grist mill and converted it to paper manufacturing. For over a century, Glatfelter was known as one of America's finest specialty book paper makers — their Spring Grove mill produced the opaque, lightweight papers used for Bibles, legal codes, and dictionaries that publishers could not get elsewhere. The company's transformation into a global technical nonwovens manufacturer came through a series of acquisitions in the 2000s-2020s: Jacob Holm (Danish airlaid), Georgia-Pacific Nonwovens, and others. In 2024, Glatfelter merged with Berry Global's Health, Hygiene and Specialties nonwovens business to form Magnera Corporation — one of the largest specialty nonwovens companies globally. The 1864 Bible-paper mill from Pennsylvania Spring Grove is now part of a $2B+ nonwovens platform. A company known to publishers for making the thin paper in their Bibles is now primarily known to consumer goods companies for making the substrate in their baby wipes — an industrial transformation that preserved technical fiber expertise while completely reorienting the market focus.
Glatfelter Corporation (now Magnera) ↗

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