The ability to custom design corrugated packaging for specific use underlies its versatility and performance in a wide variety of product and distribution scenarios. To design and engineer an efficient and cost-effective package, it is important to understand the package performance requirements of the environment. Detailed knowledge of the specific distribution environment allows design and qualification of the package, speeding up both development and performance assurance processes.
The use of environmental factors to determine corrugated packaging strength requirements is a fundamental necessity. It allows engineers to establish safety factors for corrugated packaging to withstand top to bottom compressive loads in the environments that the packaging will be exposed to, such as the distribution and warehouse conditions. To date, the equations used to calculate these safety factors have been based on data derived in the 1960s and ’70s, using commercially available substrates of that era. The values are published in the
Fibre Box Association’s “Fibre Box Handbook,” which is used by corrugated packaging designers as a key technical resource.