What is good cardboard quality?

Cardboard quality is available in many different forms. What is very good board quality for one customer may not work for another customer. So you can certainly argue about quality, but every application requires a different packaging and therefore often a different cardboard quality. At De Jong Packaging we make custom corrugated cardboard boxes and fortunately there are a number of standards. The quality of the box depends on a number of aspects.

What is important for cardboard quality?

• Used corrugation for the cardboard
• The choice of new or recycled paper
• The colour of the paper
• Are we going to print the box?
• The weight of the paper
• Choice of single or double corrugated cardboard
• Construction of the box

Corrugation of the cardboard

Corrugated cardboard for boxes is made from at least 3 layers of paper. You have the layer inside of the box, the outside and the interlayer. That interlayer is the well-known “wave”. This is noticeable on the side of the cardboard, because you can see through it. You may even see different thicknesses of that wave. That is now important for corrugated cardboard. The thicker the corrugation, the stronger the box. You can compare this with columns that have to contain something. All those waves are half columns and therefore give a lot of strength. The larger a column is for a house or bridge, for example, the more weight it can carry. The same applies to the wave in corrugated cardboard. In the corrugated world, we give letters to indicate the thickness of the cardboard. Actually, this is not about the thickness of the corrugation, but about the height of the corrugation, because we produce the corrugated cardboard lying flat. The table below shows the wave height of the cardboard that we produce at De Jong Packaging.

Use of the box

All these components influence the quality of the box and therefore of the cardboard. But which cardboard quality is best for your packaging depends on the packaging and shipping process. You can imagine that it differs whether you send a can of paint to a city 30 km away or whether you send a pallet of soft cheeses to the other side of the world. Both producers want good quality for the box, but that will differ for both companies. That is why it is important to be clear with your application how, what and where you will send products. Our colleagues can then advise you on the most suitable cardboard quality.

New or recycled paper?

You can choose fresh or recycled paper. In the paper industry we refer to fresh paper as kraftliner. Since paper cannot be recycled indefinitely, a small amount of kraftliner will always have to be added to productions. According to scientific research by the Technical University of Graz, you can recycle cardboard 24 times. Of course you don’t have to use a kraftliner, but you can choose a box that is completely custom made for you from recycled cardboard.

You choose kraftliner when the box needs to be extra strong or when the box is used in a humid environment. Kraftliner is more resistant to moisture. This is because the fibers hook into each other more and it is therefore more difficult for moisture to penetrate.

The colour of the paper and the printing of the box

You can choose white or brown paper for cardboard boxes. This is a choice that you make yourself and has no direct influence on the cardboard quality. But if you want a want to print something on the box it looks better on white paper than on brown paper. White paper is more expensive than brown paper and that is why this paper is not always chosen.

The same goes for printing the box. This mainly affects the appearance of the box. For many companies it is important that the print is clear on the box. This makes little difference to the strength, but certainly to the use. You can opt for a full print, but also a simple text or code that we print to size ensures better ease of use and therefore a higher quality of the box.

Paper weight

If you have ever been to the bookstore to buy thick paper to print something special, you know that there is a difference in grammages. Standard printing paper is 80g/m2. Paper we use ranges from 90g/m2 to 250g/m2. This gives you many choices in the weight of the paper. In general, heavier paper is also stronger, because more fibers are used for the same surface area of ​​paper. You have to take into account the type of paper. Kraftliner is stronger than recycled paper as described above. That is why our colleagues always look for the optimal result for your packaging. That’s why you don’t see many standard packaging on our website, but we make the majority of the boxes specially made according to the correct specifications. Do you want advice on this? Then please contact our colleagues.

Single or double corrugated cardboard

As you can probably imagine, double corrugated cardboard is stronger than single corrugated cardboard. You have 2 waves, so you have more columns, more paper and more weight. All these things ensure that you have a stronger box than a box with only corrugated cardboard. However, double corrugated boxes are not always necessary. It depends on the use whether you need the strongest possible packaging. Because double corrugated cardboard is also more expensive than single corrugated cardboard, not everyone will automatically opt for this. A large part of the boxes we make are therefore made of corrugated cardboard and this is also a good cardboard quality for many applications. We look at the use and the product, so that we can produce the right custom box based on the correct data.

Construction of the box

The right construction for a box is important for the right quality. If you are looking for a tomato box, you need a completely different type of box than an archive box or SRP packaging. All these different constructions also require a different cardboard quality. Due to the application of the box, the entire box will have to be made in a different way. With a tomato box, the product must be easy to place in the box and it must also be very visible. In addition, the tomato tray must be very strong, because you do not want tomato soup at the end of the transport. With an archive box, the product does not have to be visible, because you do want to store the products. However, this archive box must last a long time, so that you can use other use paper types and produce the box in a different way. An SRP packaging must often be used for transport, but after transport it must give a lot of visibility to the product in the supermarket. The front and top of the packaging must then often be able to be torn off quickly and easily.

We will design and produce a different construction for all these different applications. Each box is therefore specially made to measure. So there are many different factors that influence good cardboard quality. The strongest box is therefore not automatically the right box. Advice is important here and our colleagues can provide that. Do you have questions, comments or do you want to know more? Then please contact us.