Packaging for doors, panels and long components

Protecting the finished surface

On a painted, powder coated, veneered, laminated or glazed face, the damage that gets rejected is rarely structural. It is a scuff, a print mark or a pressure line. Bare corrugated rubbing against a gloss finish for two hundred miles will leave a mark, and so will grit trapped between the two.

• Interleave the face with tissue, paper or a foam sheet so nothing rigid touches it directly.
• Keep contact points consistent, so the load bears in the same places rather than wherever it settles.
• Where two panels travel face to face, always put an interleaf between them.
• Avoid tape, print or adhesive against a finished surface.

Edges, corners and ends

A flat panel is strong across its face and weak at its perimeter. Any knock is concentrated at an edge or, worse, a corner. This is where the money is best spent.

Sleeves, wraps and full enclosure

For a single door or panel, a folded corrugated wrap with taped or glued ends is usually the most efficient answer: it is quick to apply, it stores flat and it gives you a printable surface for handling instructions. For a set of panels, a base and sleeve on a pallet, with layer pads between units, is easier to load and safer to move than individually boxed items strapped together.

Long, narrow components need thinking about differently. The pack has to resist bending along its length as much as impact, so it wants either the item itself carrying that load with the pack protecting the ends, or a stiffened board section that supports the item along its full length.

Protrusions and fittings

Handles, hinges, brackets, glazing beads, cables and locks are the parts that get caught and bent. If a fitting is attached before despatch, the pack must be designed with the fitting on, not with the plain panel. That normally means a die cut recess in a fitment, a local pad that raises the surrounding surface above the fitting, or a small void that keeps the fitting away from the wall of the pack.

Handling and labelling

• Mark the correct orientation clearly. Panels are frequently damaged because they were laid flat and stacked when they should have travelled on edge.
• Print or label a lifting point so two people pick it up the same way each time.
• Note the weight on the pack. Long items feel lighter than they are until they are moving.
• Keep the label panel clear of the finished face so nobody peels adhesive off your product.

A worked example

A typical door pack we make is a printed corrugated wrap with a paper interleaf against the face, moulded or board corner protectors on all four corners, a stiffened board section at the lock edge where the ironmongery sits, and orientation printed on both faces. It is a cheaper pack than the double wall case it replaced, and it fails far less often, because the protection is where the damage was actually happening.

Where we come in

We manufacture wraps, sleeves, end caps, fitments and long boxes to size at our Letchworth Garden City site, supply the interleaving, edge protection and strapping to go with them, and can hold agreed quantities for call-off so the pack is on the shelf when your production run finishes. We deliver on our own vehicles across Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Northamptonshire and London.

Send us the dimensions, the weight, the finish and a photo of what is failing today, and we will propose a pack. If it helps, we will come and see how it is loaded first.