Packaging Materials

Folding paperboard

A single ply of board, printed flat, die-cut, creased and glued once. It is the substrate behind most cartons on any shelf.

• SBS — Bleached, clay-coated white board. The best print surface we work with for fine type and gradients.
• Kraft — Unbleached brown board. Folds well, but print contrast is limited, so it suits bolder or one-colour artwork.
• Recycled grades — Higher recycled content with slightly less consistent folding behaviour and a greyer base.
• Strengths — Print quality, cost, flat shipping, fine die-cut detail, fast hand assembly.
• Limits — Carrying weight, surviving repeated opening, holding shape once empty, compression in a stack.

Rigid board

Greyboard — a thick, dense recycled chipboard — cut flat, cornered, then wrapped in a separately printed sheet. The greyboard gives structure; the wrap gives the surface.

• Typical thickness — Between 1.5 mm and 3 mm, specified against lid size and content weight.
• Wrap options — Printed art paper, uncoated fine paper, textured stock, kraft, or metallised board.
• Strengths — Squareness, perceived value, holding shape when empty, deep emboss and deboss, surviving repeated opening.
• Limits — Cost, storage and freight volume, edge moisture stability, and it cannot ship flat.

The volume cost is the one people underestimate. A pallet of assembled rigid boxes holds a small fraction of what the same pallet holds in flat cartons, and that recurs on every order.

Corrugated board

A fluted medium between two liners. The flute size sets the character.

• E-flute — Thin, prints reasonably, and used for retail-facing cases and display units.
• B-flute — The general transit workhorse. Good crush resistance for its weight.
• C-flute — Thicker flutes, better cushioning, slightly less stacking strength than B for the same weight.
• BC double-wall — For heavy loads or cases stacked several high.
• Limits — Fine print detail — the flute structure shows through small reversed type — and surface finish.

The point at which a printed carton should become a corrugated case is usually the loaded weight. Ten filled 10ml vials is roughly where we stop recommending folding board for a pack that ships on its own; the shipping box page covers the outer specification.

Caliper, and why it is not a detail

Caliper is board thickness, and it is the property that decides whether a carton feels solid or flimsy at a given size.

• Panel span drives it — A tall narrow carton has longer unsupported panels than a compact one with the same footprint, so it needs more caliper.
• Loaded weight drives it — A carton holding six filled 10ml vials needs more than one holding a single 2ml vial.
• Stacking drives it — A case that survives alone can fail three high on a pallet.
• Over-specifying costs — Across thousands of units, unnecessary caliper is a substantial and invisible waste.

Grain direction

Paperboard has a fibre direction, and it explains a complaint we hear often: cartons that crack at the creases.

• With the grain — Folds cleanly and stays crisp.
• Across the grain — Cracks, and cracks far more readily in dry conditions or cold storage.
• It matters most on inserts — Which have more folds per unit area than a carton does.
• It is set at cutting — You do not need to specify it — but it is one practical reason to have inserts made rather than adapted from stock.

Insert materials

• Closed-cell EVA foam — Compresses and returns, so it grips by interference and absorbs impact. Not paper.
• PET and RPET — Clear, rigid thermoformed trays. Widely recycled, but separately from the carton.
• PP — More flexible and heat-tolerant than PET, and less optically clear.
• Moulded pulp — Formed paper fibre. Opaque and matte, and it recycles with the box — the format is described on the formed tray page.
• Paperboard — Die-cut and folded platforms and partitions, in the same material family as the carton.

How these compare on cost, protection and loading speed is worked through on the insert comparison page.

Environmental characteristics, stated accurately

We will describe what a specification contains and what that means. We will not describe a pack as recyclable in general terms when parts of it are not.

• Keeps a pack single-stream — Aqueous coating instead of laminate; paperboard or moulded pulp insert; open die-cut instead of a film window; no magnets.
• Breaks single-stream — Plastic laminate film, film window patches, foam inserts, plastic trays, magnetic closures, foil.
• Recycled content — Available in kraft, recycled folding grades, greyboard and RPET.
• The honest trade-off — Paper-based builds protect less against impact and moisture. If that matters for your pack, we will say so rather than let the specification through.