Packing paper boxes for sea freight

Paper packaging is light and bulky, which makes it expensive to ship by air and common to ship by sea. A container is a humid environment, and the way boxes are packed inside it decides whether they arrive flat and clean.

Start with the inner packing. Rigid boxes are nested with paper interleaves and stacked in a way that puts weight on the walls rather than on the lid. Folding cartons are shipped flat and strapped in counted bundles, so the packing line at the destination can count without opening every bundle.

Outer cartons should be sized to the bundles, not to a round number. Empty space inside a carton collapses under load, and the box above it then sits on the packaging instead of the carton walls.

Moisture is the slow problem. Cartons are lined with a moisture barrier liner where the destination climate is humid, and desiccant is added for long routes. For foil-stamped work, keeping the packing area dry matters more than adding more desiccant later.

Finally, shipping marks. Agree the mark before production finishes, including carton count, dimensions and any handling symbols the buyer needs. Our office prepares the packing list against the same mark, so what the forwarder receives matches the documents.

Written by our prepress and production team from the equipment and processes we run. Materials and structures behave differently, so the approved sample governs.