How do you choose cardboard for your packaging or your interlayers? Are there any unique parameters to evaluate?
Are there any criteria for whether it is better to choose flat or corrugated cardboard?
Why to choose either of them?
More importantly, how to make sure that the choice we make is the most useful, profitable and better suited for our production instead of being the result of a habit or inertia?
Seeing is believing: flat vs corrugated cardboard. Let’s test them!
If your work with interlayer pads, it is a good idea to take advantage of the winter period to do tests and find out which solution is the most effective.
The most common mistake in choosing packaging cardoboard, is thinking that a greater thickness or grammage guarantees better performance in terms of resistance.
It is an understandable belief, but it is not necessarily correct. Indeed, it is often wrong.
Grammage and thickness are not the only characteristic of a cardboard sheet. There’s also a third feature to be taken into account to define its correct use: toughness; the ability to resist strain.
Toughness of cardoboard is defined on the basis of its mechanical characteristics. The higher the percentage of natural fibers in the paper, the higher the toughness. Evaluating a cardboard simply by its thickness as it would be enough to ensure strength and tightness, can actually leads to nasty surprises:
- Failing Creasing and folding.
- mismatching closing flaps
- technical problems
In our experience, a correct sizing of the cardboard for packaging can drastically reduce surprises. A well manufactured flat cardboard, in fact, can guarantee excellent resistance and toughness even at lower grammages than its corrugated equivalent.
Flat or corrugated recycled cardboard? It all comes down to marketing choices and company values.
It’s not just a matter of pricing or regulations. In moving towards a recycled cardboard takes also in consideration how do we want to be recognized. While it is true that governments struggle to agree on emission reduction policies, consumers are certainly more compact. There’s only one choice: let’s recycle and do it better.
Recycling in numbers.
Companies have to listen more and more to this voice that comes “from below”, it’s the voice of the consumer, who asks for intelligent packaging, coming from recycling chains. A product guaranteed by controls and certifications, capable to fulfill a purpose that it is not only commercial, but an environmental one, above else. That’s a bet we all want to win.
When to choose flat cardboard as an alternative to corrugated.
The characteristics of corrugated cardboard are to guarantee a good yield by keeping the grammage in check. But there are limitations. When we talk about interlayers (very used, for example, for mineral waters) the attention shifts to the thickness and the number of sheets per pallet.
Corrugated cardboard, in these cases, is decidedly inconvenient, unlike single-jet (or stretched) cardboard which becomes easier to manage, stronger, and logistically more manageable. Not to mention the more “friendly” price.
Stretched cardboard, in fact, palletizes more easily, which means that, with the same pallet there are more sheets available, with a lower thickness and comparable strength.
Are these indications enough to choose between flat and corrugated cardboard?
No. The truth is that recycled cardboard for interlayer and cardboard for packaging are materials that derive from complex and delicate processes. The mechanical characteristics must be guaranteed by adequate laboratory and chemical tests.
That’s why Cartiera Fornaci has chosen a more elaborate certification process than many of its peers. Wanting to reduce emissions is an excellent concept, but doing it and guaranteeing quality products, in line with the most stringent European regulations, is the higher standard we want to meet.
It has been our commitment for over thirty years now.
Don’t just trust us, don’t rely on data or good intentions, we want you to do tests and verify in person our products., in your production chain, in the managing of your materials.
Let’s start with a tailor-made sample and a chat with our technicians.
You will see the difference.