What’s more, they are great for passengers too. Anyone who has ever flown will know how difficult it is to eat an airline meal without sliding the dishes around the tray as you attempt to seize that last morsel. Then, how many times have you had to stop your tray from sliding off your table completely and landing in your – or worse your neighbor’s – lap?

This solution is neat: a compact box made from thin material, with multiple compartments to keep dishes separated and protected. It is an easy-to-assemble tray that is equally easy to open, so passengers can dig right in. From a marketing perspective, airlines will have no trouble printing high quality branding and graphics on the packaging. How do you think this will affect your in-flight dining experience?

But thanks to a new corrugated packing solution the future is looking brighter.

By functioning as either primary or secondary packaging, it allows distributers to ship the fruit from its country of origin without the need for repacking at its final destination. Furthermore, in-store these stackable, display-ready boxes reduce merchandising labor requirements and are great for promoting the producer’s or retailer’s brand.

On the last leg of the journey – from store to home – the box keeps the melon from being crushed between the rest of the shopping and the side of the car each time a corner is rounded.

Able to see the robust and attractive packaging on the outside and the fruit inside, shoppers will be confident that the melon is in pristine condition. No need for squeezing!

Although pairing corrugated packaging with children’s creativity is not a new notion, it has never really been commercialised. Many kids can just go on scavenger hunts around the house for spare corrugated, find some tape, and bring their designs to life, not just by shaping the boxes but by painting them too. The issue is the amount of corrugated available in the house…

This is where the story of Jeff Freeland Nelson comes in. Taking inspiration from his childhood experiences of making things with cardboard, he has created a new corrugated construction kit specifically designed for young children – “Play from Scratch”.

Taking research by Ribena (where 1 in 7 parents reported their kids played longer with the packaging than the actual toy) and an informal Ohio experiment (where a brave teacher replaced all toys with corrugated packaging) into consideration, it would appear the “market research” is in favor of Jeff’s idea.

Now it’s time for really young “designers” to show us what they’ve got!

We thought it would also be fun to introduce you to another character – Russell the Spruce!

To share facts about sustainability, Eurosac, the European federation of paper sack manufacturers, produced a short video about Russell, a young pine spruce starting out life in a sustainably managed forest in Scandinavia.

Currently just a few feet tall, Russell can’t wait until he’s big enough and strong enough to do amazing things as an industrial paper sack. For now, while still in the forest, he competes with the other young pines trees to gulp in the most CO₂ then puff out the most O₂ back into the atmosphere.

Watch the video to see Russell explain how he helps the planet throughout his life: when growing, while he’s working, and even when he retires.

Russell is clearly an impressive fellow and although he refers to paper sacks, many of the benefits he mentions are also true for other paper based packaging, including corrugated!

To address this issue, one of our members devised a bottle packaging solution – aptly called Care bottle packaging ­­– that halves handling time. Thanks to its one-piece delivery, it also reduces packaging materials by 20% and provides 5% savings in logistics. 

A winner from 2012’s Goldene Welle (Golden Flute) innovation award, this packaging has a self-adjusting pad precisely glued in, which expands when you unfold the flat pack and adjusts when the bottle is inserted.

In transport, the bottle simply floats within the outer protective enclosure, secured by the automated base and a collar rim that presses against its shoulders.

For anyone who struggles keeping their drinks cold or gets fed up with going back and forth to the fridge, one of our members has a solution.

“IcePack”, which recently received an award in WorldStar’s 2013 beverage category, is an inventive packaging solution for beer multipacks. Made from water-resistant paper, it’s able to hold ice and therefore keep your beers cool – making it functional as well as a unique “sharing-friendly” design.

Their solution? They found that by simply rotating the direction of the fluting (corrugations), not only did they save customers 20% in packaging costs by using less material, but they also strengthened the packaging, improving the stacking compressing resistance by 13%. And that’s not all – the new blanks can be processed faster as they can be cut and erected more smoothly.

Whether it is moving a box in the warehouse, in-store, or at home, we’ve all had to handle heavy boxes.

Corner Box, a new design by Huang Hsiao Yuan and Lin Tsen Yin, can help make lifting boxes easier. With small cutouts inverting the box’s bottom corner, you can easily get a firm grip by sliding your fingers into the bright yellow corner zone.

You may think, “Surely a cutout will impact the strength of the box”. Not so. The team has identified the exact cut that ensures the structure maintains its strength.

There will be some compromise of space inside the box, but ease of handling is a priority for distributors and retailers. Clever feature? We welcome your comments.

Please give a warm welcome to… Mr. Corrugated!

“Mr. Corrugated” embodies all the great advantages about corrugated packaging. We hope you like the campaign and will share the videos with your friends, colleagues and customers. Also, please let us know what you think of Mr. Corrugated by leaving a comment.

Here are some facts from a study in Germany:

• 79% of the German consumers think that paper based packaging is ecologically advantageous compared to plastics.

• 73% think that paper and carton/corrugated are ecologically sensible packaging materials vs 12% in favour of plastics.

Furthermore, in more eco-conscious countries, Nielsen studies reveal a consumer preference for packaging that is recyclable, biodegradable and safe from a disposal perspective – using materials such as paper, cardboard, and/or glass rather than plastic or polystyrene.