How Industrial Shipping Boxes Protect Your Most Valuable Assets
Having sturdy, functional shipping materials in place is essential for industrial applications. In order to ensure quality, keep business relationships strong, and avoid customer complaints, manufacturers need to keep their shipping plans and processes in line. Choosing the right industrial shipping boxes for the job at hand is the first step.
Industrial companies need to make myriad decisions when it comes to their packaging and shipment processes. Using the right material for packaging constructed in the most stable way possible with the right protective materials, sealant, and labeling is important for every industrial business in order to reduce costly damage and ensure customer satisfaction.
Here is a guide to industrial shipping boxes and additional materials and how they can keep your assets safe.
It Starts with a Sturdy, Well-Constructed Industrial Shipping Box
Making sure the boxes you’re using are structurally sound is important for every business, but especially for industrial uses. Industrial businesses are judged based on their consistent product quality, as each component is often essential to a larger product or function. The shipment of highly valuable mechanical- or construction-related components and equipment requires a heavy duty packaging solution in order to ensure safety.
Corrugated is a strong material that can be manipulated for different uses, including being manufactured in a higher thickness for heavier parts. Industrial shipping boxes will need to be constructed in a particular way, with a lot of thought toward transport method and related conditions, storage method and amount of time, and the particular size, shape, and fragility of the item at hand.
That’s why industrial companies will want to work with expert packaging engineers who know how to keep every type of product or component safe. Jamestown has an International Safe Transit Association (ISTA) certified testing lab in-house in order to fulfill all of the protective packaging and structural box needs of our customers, especially those with particularly sensitive, irregularly-shaped and -sized, and/or highly expensive products and components that need to be shipped. That’s why our boxes have proven to be ideal solutions for our industrial customers.
Next, Add the Right Custom Packing Inserts
Using the right industrial shipping boxes alone will not fully protect the parts you’re shipping, as box void also needs to be addressed. Although custom boxes will be a better fit for your products, there is bound to be some open space left on the inside of the box. This poses a threat to industrial shipment safety, as products or components in boxes that have any space leftover will bounce around during transport, which is a huge cause of shipping damage.
Custom foam packing inserts will reduce damage during shipping. They are cut to exactly match an item’s shape and size, making them perfect for products that have multiple components that need to stay in place, as well as highly valuable potentially damage-able items that need extra protection.
Polyurethane foam is lightweight and ideal for small, light, fragile components needing to be shipped safely without increasing shipping costs, while polyethylene foam has a close-celled construction perfect for protecting larger and heavier items or dampening electrical charges. Between using anti-static materials for electronic components and shaping foam inserts to the specific product, custom foam products will keep even the smallest components in place and protect even the most delicate parts.
These Out-of-the-Box Industrial Packaging Products Are Just as Important As What’s Inside
Using the correct labels to mark how to handle a box, its fragility, and add any necessary warnings is one of the final steps to making sure your industrial shipping packaging is up to par. You’ll want to make sure that you have the right sealing material and method to keep your industrial shipping boxes closed during transport; that any warning labels required by law for the materials or types of components you’re shipping are clearly visible and durable. You also need to ensure the box is labeled correctly so it’s handled with the correct side up, considered fragile if necessary, and makes it to the correct endpoint seamlessly.
Strapping, stretch film, and pallet covers will ensure your industrial products are held in place and covered from the elements. It may not matter if you have the correct industrial shipping boxes with the right protective packing materials packed, sealed, and labeled correctly if they can’t be handled well. Securing your products properly together and to pallets and covering them if necessary will make sure that all previous steps aren’t taken in vain.
Speaking of pallets, last but certainly not least, high-quality pallets and pallet trucks will be important for proper material handling in industrial environments. Making sure you have the right equipment to transfer your industrial products from one place to another safely will be a huge contributor in whether or not your items will be able to withstand the full process of shipping and handling.