What is Butchers Paper?

Butchers paper is an uncoated, unwaxed paper traditionally used to wrap meat, fish and other fresh food over the counter. In Australia it is usually a newsprint grade or white kraft paper around 45 to 60gsm, sold in rolls up to 1215mm wide and in pre-cut sheets bought by the kilo rather than by sheet count.

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What is butchers paper made from?

Butchers paper is a plain mechanical wood pulp paper with nothing added to the surface. No wax, no silicone, no laminate, no clay coating. That bare surface is the point: it takes a marker pen straight away, tears cleanly across the roll, folds without cracking and absorbs rather than repels moisture.

The base stock is the same paper used for newspaper printing, just supplied unprinted. QIS butchers paper is a newsprint grade in off-white at roughly 45gsm. The companion entry on newsprint paper covers how that stock is made and why it yellows; this page covers the format, the comparisons and the food question.

White, brown and pink butchers paper

Three colours turn up under the same name and are not the same product. White or off-white is the Australian default, a newsprint grade bright enough to write on. Brown butchers paper is really kraft paper, a chemically pulped sheet that is stronger and more tear resistant, better suited to parcels than to a counter.

The pink or peach paper seen in American low and slow barbecue is a third, heavier grade sold there for food contact. It is not the same stock as an Australian newsprint roll and is far less common here, so do not assume a general purpose roll behaves the same way in a smoker.

Butchers paper vs greaseproof, baking paper and kraft paper

These four get used interchangeably and should not be. The difference comes down to one question: what, if anything, has been done to the surface of the sheet.

Paper	Coating	Grease resistance	Oven safe	Typical use
Butchers paper (newsprint)	None	Low, it absorbs oil and will darken	No	Wrapping, packing, table covers, art and workshop walls
Greaseproof paper	None, the pulp is heavily refined so the sheet itself is dense	Good, oil sits on the surface rather than soaking through	No, it is a wrapping paper not a baking paper	Wrapping fried food, sandwiches, deli items, lining trays
Baking paper	Silicone	High, and non-stick as well	Yes, to the temperature the maker states	Lining baking trays and tins
Brown kraft paper	None unless specified	Low	No	Parcel wrapping, void fill, gift wrap, protection

The short version: butchers paper and kraft paper wrap things, greaseproof holds back oil, and only baking paper goes in the oven. Substituting butchers paper for baking paper is the mistake worth avoiding.

Is butchers paper food safe?

This deserves a straight answer. Australia has no pre-market approval regime for food contact materials, so there is no such thing as an official food grade certificate for a paper here. The obligation sits in the FSANZ Food Standards Code instead: Standard 3.2.2 requires packaging to be fit for its intended use and not likely to cause food contamination, and Standard 1.4.1 sets maximum levels for contaminants that could migrate into food.

In practice a paper suits direct food contact only when it has been manufactured and supplied to that specification. A general wrapping and covering stock is a different thing, even when the sheet looks identical, and recycled or printed newsprint should never touch food because of the inks and recovered fibre.

QIS butchers paper is a newsprint grade supplied for wrapping, packing, covering and art use, and is not recommended for direct contact with food. If you need paper that sits against food, ask your supplier for the material specification and a declaration of compliance.

Rolls, sheets and how Australian sizes are quoted

Rolls are quoted as width in millimetres by length in metres. Australian roll widths run 450mm, 600mm, 750mm, 915mm and 1215mm, with 500 metres the standard length. A roll suits a counter or packing bench with a dispenser, where you pull and tear to length and waste little.

Sheets are quoted as width by height in millimetres, and here is the part that surprises people: they are sold by weight, not by sheet count. A pack is a 17kg bundle, so the sheet count falls as the sheet size rises.

Sheet size	Approximate sheets per 17kg pack	Suits
Deli, 510 x 380mm	About 1,900	Counter wrapping, small items, market stalls
Small, 610 x 450mm	About 1,350	General wrapping, kids craft, packing
Medium, 700 x 510mm	About 1,030	Larger items, table covers, classroom sheets
Extra large, 890 x 580mm	About 720	Brainstorming walls, backdrops, drop sheets, removals

Because everything is weighed rather than counted, compare suppliers on pack weight and paper weight together. A lighter gsm gives more sheets in the same 17kg but a thinner, more fragile sheet, so sheet count alone tells you little.

Butchers paper in Australia

Australia uses the term far more loosely than the name suggests. Ask for butchers paper in a school or a training room and nobody thinks about meat: they mean a large off-white sheet to stick on a wall and write on with markers. Teachers, workshop facilitators and market stallholders buy a great deal more of it than butchers do, and the extra large 890 x 580mm sheet exists largely because of that.

Two local conventions matter. Paper weight is quoted in gsm, grams per square metre, not the pounds per ream basis weight used in North America, so an imported spec sheet needs converting. And widths and lengths are metric, which is why 915mm and 1215mm appear here rather than rounded imperial equivalents.

The other local driver is removals and packing. Unprinted newsprint scrunches into good void fill and wraps crockery without transferring ink, which recycled newspaper does. QIS holds the range in Brisbane, despatches same day before 12pm and ships Australia-wide, on 1800 555 343.

Related guides

Butchers paper and newsprint paper are the same base stock under two names, so start there for the manufacturing detail. For the brown alternative see what is kraft paper, and for how paper weight is quoted here see what is gsm. For delicate items, acid free tissue paper explains why an ordinary sheet is not always right.

Sizes, roll widths and stock availability sit on the butchers paper range page, and the roll formats on the butchers paper roll page.

Not sure which width suits your bench? Contact our Brisbane team.