UK SIC 2007 · 17290
Manufacture of other articles of paper and paperboard n.e.c. (SIC code 17290)
Manufacture of other articles of paper and paperboard n.e.c. is UK SIC code 17290. It sits in division 17 (Manufacture of paper and paper products) of the SIC 2007 list. On the August 2026 Companies House register, 535 active UK companies list 17290 among their SIC codes. 447 of them list it first.
Division 17: Manufacture of paper and paper products
Converting rather than milling. The codes with real numbers here are paper stationery, 17230, paperboard containers, 17219, household and sanitary paper goods, 17220, and the catch-all 17290. Actual pulp and paper mills sit in codes far below the threshold, which reflects an industry where a handful of very large plants make the paper and a long tail of smaller companies turn it into things.
Who prospects SIC 17290 companies
Print finishers, packaging designers, machinery and die suppliers all sell into this division. So do the brands looking for UK packaging production, which has become a more active search since supply chains shortened. Because packaging companies frequently also print, expect overlap with division 18, and match on any SIC position rather than the first if you want the real population. Environmental and recycling compliance services have a natural opening here too.
Lead generation for wholesalers & suppliers →How to read SIC 17290
SIC 17290 is a five-digit code, and the digits are not arbitrary. The first two, 17, are the division, manufacture of paper and paper products. Add the third and you have group 172; the fourth narrows it to a class, and the fifth to the subclass, which is the level Companies House actually asks a company to pick. The whole division sits under section C, manufacturing, the broadest tier there is. Reading a code left to right therefore goes from a whole sector down to one activity.
More on how SIC 17290 is built
A company chooses its own codes when it incorporates and can change them on any confirmation statement. It may list up to four, and Companies House does not check whether they are right. That is why 17290 is worth reading as a claim the company made about itself rather than as a verified fact, and why the first-position and any-position counts above differ.
Measured on the August 2026 register, the busiest registered-office post towns for 17290 are London (65), Birmingham (18), Nottingham (14), Glasgow (8) and Leeds (8). Those are registered-office locations, which is where the paperwork sits rather than necessarily where the work happens, so treat them as where to start looking rather than as a service area.
Using SIC 17290 as a filter
535 companies is 0.01 per cent of the 5,190,464 active companies on the UK register, and ranks 17290 4th most used of the 4 codes we track in division 17. That is the pool before any filter. Whether it is a big market for you depends on what you sell, but it is the number every other filter on this page cuts down from.
More on filtering by SIC 17290
447 companies put 17290 first and a further 88, 16 per cent, list it in one of their other three SIC slots. That gap is the difference between a tight list and a broad one. First-code-only is the safer filter when you are writing to them; matching any position is worth it when you need the volume.
These companies are spread out. London is the largest single cluster at 12 per cent and the top five post towns together hold only 21 per cent, so the remaining 79 per cent sits across the rest of the country. A regional filter narrows this list without gutting it, which makes it a reasonable code to work territory by territory.
In practice the code on its own is rarely the whole filter. Pair 17290 with an incorporation date to catch companies in their first months, when they are still choosing suppliers, or with a filing deadline to reach them while the year end is on their mind. A worked example for this code: 17290, registered office in London, incorporated in the last ninety days, which turns a 535 company pool into a list you can write to in an afternoon. Add the poor-website filter if what you sell is a website, or a recent change of officer if you sell to whoever just took the job. Every company you pull carries the Companies House record, the director's name, a verified website and a verified email, and the ones we cannot complete are not charged.
Where SIC 17290 clusters in the UK
ACTIVE COMPANIES BY REGISTERED-OFFICE POST TOWN · COMPANIES HOUSE REGISTER, AUGUST 2026
SIC 17290 companies, as leads
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About SIC 17290
How many UK companies use SIC code 17290?
535 active UK companies list 17290 (Manufacture of other articles of paper and paperboard n.e.c.) among their registered SIC codes. Each company may register up to four. Of those, 447 put it first. The figures come from the August 2026 Companies House register snapshot, and count active companies only.
Should a packaging company use 17219 or a printing code?
If you make the box, 17219 manufacture of paper and paperboard containers is right. If you print onto material someone else made, a division 18 printing code fits better. Many companies genuinely do both and list both. Nobody at Companies House will assess it, so pick the one carrying most of your turnover first.
Why are there so few paper mills on the public record?
Because there are genuinely very few, and the ones that exist are large. Manufacturing paper is capital-intensive and consolidated, whereas converting it is not, so the company count sits almost entirely in the converting codes. Company numbers are a poor guide to industry size in divisions like this one.
Find UK SIC 17290 companies
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