Rengo Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Kita-ku, Osaka; President & CEO: Kiyoshi Otsubo) announces that RAFEP, its fire-retardant corrugated board, has won the Nikkei Business Daily Awards for Superiority at the 2012 Nikkei Superior Products and Services Awards.

The Nikkei Superior Products and Services Awards are given by Nikkei Inc. to products and services that are evaluated as having particularly excellent quality from among the new products and services that appeared in the company's newspapers from January to December 2012. This is the 31st such award. Rengo was given this award due to high evaluations of RAFEP, a fire-retardant corrugated board that is a revolutionary product because it defies the conventional wisdom that corrugated board—which is made of paper—burns easily.

RAFEP has fire-retardant properties that ensure flames will not spread even when a torch burner is directly applied for two straight minutes. It has been certified as a fire-retardant product by the Japan Fire Retardant Association. This product is approximately 1/6th of the weight of Grade 2 standard structural fire-retardant plywood, and possesses the same or greater strength. It can be processed in the same way as regular corrugated board, and beautiful decorative printing via offset printing can be employed. RAFEP is fully recyclable, and the chemicals used in the fire-retardant processing have no effect on the human body.

The outstandingly fire-retardant RAFEP has already been adopted by Itabashi-ku (Tokyo) for corrugated board partitions for evacuation shelters. Its wide range of expected usages include fields in which corrugated board has not been utilized in the past, such as building materials, filters, and automobile parts.

As a pioneer in the Japanese corrugated packaging industry, Rengo has accumulated a long history of corrugated board technologies and expertise. Rengo will continue to make use of this knowledge and experience as it proceeds to work for further innovations and to develop new usages for its products.