Corrugated Boxes

I recently visited a factory and saw how corrugated boxes were made. 1 wavy sheet of paper called a flute and 2 flat sheets of paper called liners makes one corrugated board. The air pockets created by the flute makes the board strong and provides a cushion of protection.

Let me tell the process of corrugated boxes.

The craft paper is bought from paper mills.

Then the papers are passed through two giant rollers and during this process, a flat sheet is beveled and steamed so that it becomes the wavy flute at the center of the cardboard. The two liners of flat paper are added on each side of the flute one at a time using a glue containing mostly water and starch. The sheets are cut of desired size, as they will be too stiff to be rolled after this step.

Then the labels are stuck or printed, if required.

Next the slits are made in the sheets, in order to make them into boxes of desired sizes.

Then the sheets are pasted or stapled to make a box. The boxes that are pasted need to be kept under a weight to make it stick and air dried. The boxes that are used in the freezer are pasted in order to avoid the staples to get rusted. For other industries, the stapled boxes are used.

Finally, there is a machine that folds the corrugated sheets into a box.

Now the box is ready to keep products in.

Depending on the protection needed for the goods, the number of corrugated sheets are decided while making a corrugated box. It was an interesting factory visit.