Carton
Encyclopedia
Paperboard
Paperboard is a thick paper based material. While there is no rigid differentiation between paper and paperboard, paperboard is generally thicker than paper. According to ISO standards, paperboard is a paper with a basis weight above 224 g/m2, but there are exceptions. Paperboard can be single...
which is also sometimes known as cardboard. Many types of cartons are used in packaging. Sometimes a carton is also called a box
Box
Box describes a variety of containers and receptacles for permanent use as storage, or for temporary use often for transporting contents. The word derives from the Greek πύξος , "box, boxwood"....
.
Folding cartons
Folding carton
The folding carton created the packaging industry as it is known today, beginning in the late 19th century. Basically, a folding carton is made of paperboard, and is cut, folded, laminated and printed for transport to manufacturers. The cartons are shipped flat to a manufacturer, which has its own...
s are usually combined into a tube at the manufacturer and shipped flat (knocked down) to the packager. Tray styles have a solid bottom and are often shipped as flat blanks and assembled by the packager. Some also are self-erecting. High-speed equipment is available to set up, load, and close the cartons.
Egg carton
Egg carton
An egg carton is a carton designed for carrying and transporting whole eggs. These cartons have a dimpled form in which each dimple accommodates an individual egg and isolates that egg from eggs in adjacent dimples...
s or trays are designed to protect whole eggs while in transit. Traditionally these have been made of molded pulp
Molded pulp
Molded pulp, also named Moulded pulp or Molded Fibre, is a packaging material, typically made from recycled paperboard and/or newsprint. It is used for protective packaging or for food service trays and beverage carriers...
. This uses recycled newsprint which is molded into a shape which protects the eggs. Premium molded paper pulp egg cartons are a 92% reduction in waste after use compared to plastic More recently egg cartons have also been made from expanded polystyrene (similar to styrofoam
Styrofoam
Styrofoam is a trademark of The Dow Chemical Company for closed-cell currently made for thermal insulation and craft applications. In 1941, researchers in Dow's Chemical Physics Lab found a way to make foamed polystyrene...
) and PET
Polyethylene terephthalate
Polyethylene terephthalate , commonly abbreviated PET, PETE, or the obsolete PETP or PET-P, is a thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family and is used in synthetic fibers; beverage, food and other liquid containers; thermoforming applications; and engineering resins often in combination...
.
Aseptic carton
Cartons for liquids can be fabricated from laminates of liquid packaging boardLiquid packaging board
Liquid packaging board is a multi-ply paperboard with high stiffness, strong wet sizing and a high barrier coating. Only virgin paper fibers are used. The barrier coating must hold the liquid and prevent migration of air and flavors through the paperboard....
, foil, and polyethylene. Most are based on either Tetra Pak
Tetra Pak
Tetra Pak is a multinational food processing and packaging company of Swedish origin. It was founded in 1951 in Lund, Sweden, by Ruben Rausing. It was Erik Wallenberg who invented the tetrahedral package, today known as Tetra Classic...
or Combibloc systems. One option is to have the printed laminate supplied on a roll. The carton is cut, scorred, and formed at the packager. A second option is to have the pre-assembled tubes delivered to the packager for completion and filling. These are suited for aseptic processing
Aseptic processing
Aseptic processing is the process by which a sterile product is packaged in a sterile container in a way that maintains sterility...
and are used for milk, soup, juice, etc.
Gable top
Gable top cartons are often used for liquid products such as milk, juice, etc. These used polyethylene-coated liquid packaging boardLiquid packaging board
Liquid packaging board is a multi-ply paperboard with high stiffness, strong wet sizing and a high barrier coating. Only virgin paper fibers are used. The barrier coating must hold the liquid and prevent migration of air and flavors through the paperboard....
and sometimes a foil laminate. Most are opened by pushing open the gables at the top. Some have fitments to assist in opening and pouring the contents.
Packaging history
The history of the carton goes as far back as 1879 in a Brooklyn, New York factory operated by Robert GairRobert Gair
Robert Gair invented the folding carton in 1890 .Brooklynite Robert Gair was a printer and paper bag maker in the 1870s. He invented the paperboard folding carton by accident: a metal ruler normally used to crease bags shifted in position and cut the bag. Gair found that by cutting and creasing...
. A die-ruled, cut, and scored paperboard
Paperboard
Paperboard is a thick paper based material. While there is no rigid differentiation between paper and paperboard, paperboard is generally thicker than paper. According to ISO standards, paperboard is a paper with a basis weight above 224 g/m2, but there are exceptions. Paperboard can be single...
into a single impression of a folded carton. By 1896, the National Biscuit Company
Nabisco
Nabisco is an American brand of cookies and snacks. Headquartered in East Hanover, New Jersey, the company is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Kraft Foods. Nabisco's plant in Chicago, a production facility at 7300 S...
was the first to use cartons to package crackers.
The next development of folded paper used to construct cartons are mentioned by Dr. Winslow of Seattle, Washington in 1908 who claimed that paper milk
Milk
Milk is a white liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mother's antibodies to the baby and can reduce the risk of many...
containers were commercially sold in San Francisco and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
as early as 1906. The inventor of this carton was G.W. Maxwell. However, it was in 1915 that John Van Wormer of Toledo, Ohio was granted the first patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
for the first "paper bottle," which was the first folded blank box for holding milk. He called it the "Pure-Pak." The milk carton was original in the sense that it could be folded, glued, filled with milk, and sealed at a dairy farm.
An early American packaging industry pioneer was the Kieckhefer Container Company, which was run by John W. Kieckhefer
John W. Kieckhefer
John W. Kieckhefer was an American businessman. He took over Enterprise Box & Lumber Company, which was a family-run business started by his grandfather, Charles Kieckefer and later run by his father William Kieckhefer. When he became the company's president, he changed the name to Kieckhefer...
. The company excelled in the use of fibre shipping containers, which especially included the paper milk carton. In 1957, through an exchange of stock, the Kieckhefer Container Co. holdings were merged with the Weyerhauser Timber Company of Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma, Washington
Tacoma is a mid-sized urban port city and the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. The city is on Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Park. The population was 198,397, according to...
.
Shape
Although quite often shaped like a cuboidCuboid
In geometry, a cuboid is a solid figure bounded by six faces, forming a convex polyhedron. There are two competing definitions of a cuboid in mathematical literature...
, it is not uncommon to find cartons lacking right angle
Right angle
In geometry and trigonometry, a right angle is an angle that bisects the angle formed by two halves of a straight line. More precisely, if a ray is placed so that its endpoint is on a line and the adjacent angles are equal, then they are right angles...
s and straight edges, as in squround
Squround
Squround is a portmanteau for "square round" , referring to a compromise between a square and a round carton. It is also sometimes known as the scround....
s used for ice cream
Ice cream
Ice cream is a frozen dessert usually made from dairy products, such as milk and cream, and often combined with fruits or other ingredients and flavours. Most varieties contain sugar, although some are made with other sweeteners...
. The number of corner
Corner
A corner is the place where two lines meet at an angle, and a concave corner of intersecting walls is generally thought to be the least beneficial position to be in a life-or-death situation. From this notion was born the verb to corner, which is used to mean "to back into a corner" and usually...
s on any given carton is a function of the product it contains. For example, a product with eight vertices
Vertex (geometry)
In geometry, a vertex is a special kind of point that describes the corners or intersections of geometric shapes.-Of an angle:...
would require a box also with eight corners.
Tetrahedron
Tetrahedron
In geometry, a tetrahedron is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, three of which meet at each vertex. A regular tetrahedron is one in which the four triangles are regular, or "equilateral", and is one of the Platonic solids...
s and other shapes are available. Cartons with a hexagonal or octagonal cross sections are sometimes used for specialty items.
Materials
Cartons can be made from many materials: paperboardPaperboard
Paperboard is a thick paper based material. While there is no rigid differentiation between paper and paperboard, paperboard is generally thicker than paper. According to ISO standards, paperboard is a paper with a basis weight above 224 g/m2, but there are exceptions. Paperboard can be single...
, various plastics, or a composite
Composite material
Composite materials, often shortened to composites or called composition materials, are engineered or naturally occurring materials made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties which remain separate and distinct at the macroscopic or...
. Some are "food grade" for direct contact with foods. Many cartons are made out of a single piece of paperboard. Depending on the need, this paperboard can be wax
Wax
thumb|right|[[Cetyl palmitate]], a typical wax ester.Wax refers to a class of chemical compounds that are plastic near ambient temperatures. Characteristically, they melt above 45 °C to give a low viscosity liquid. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in organic, nonpolar solvents...
ed or coated with polyethylene
Polyethylene
Polyethylene or polythene is the most widely used plastic, with an annual production of approximately 80 million metric tons...
to form a moisture barrier. This may serve to contain a liquid product or keep a powder dry.
Artistic design
In art history, the carton was a drawing on ordinary cardboard, used as life-size design for the manufacture in an atelier of a valuable tapestryTapestry
Tapestry is a form of textile art, traditionally woven on a vertical loom, however it can also be woven on a floor loom as well. It is composed of two sets of interlaced threads, those running parallel to the length and those parallel to the width ; the warp threads are set up under tension on a...
, such as a gobelin
Gobelin
Gobelin was the name of a family of dyers, who in all probability came originally from Reims, and who in the middle of the 15th century established themselves in the Faubourg Saint Marcel, Paris, on the banks of the Bièvre....
. During the weaving it hung behind the tapestry in the making, a time-consuming process thus in a creative sense simplified to 'mechanical' painting-by-numbers.
As these were extremely valuable, often commanded by the very richest art-buyers, including princes who hung them in their palaces and even took them on their travels as prestigious displays of wealth, often with a visual message, especially the world-famous Flemish ateliers were deemed worthy to have cartons made by some of the greatest graphic artists of the time, including such celebrated painters as Rubens.
Carton-pierre
Carton-pierre, was a material used for the making of raised ornaments for wall and ceiling decoration. It is composed of thepulp of paper mixed with whiting (ground calcium carbonate
Calcium carbonate
Calcium carbonate is a chemical compound with the formula CaCO3. It is a common substance found in rocks in all parts of the world, and is the main component of shells of marine organisms, snails, coal balls, pearls, and eggshells. Calcium carbonate is the active ingredient in agricultural lime,...
) and glue, this being forced into plaster moulds backed with paper, and then removed to a drying room to harden. It is much stronger and lighter than common plaster-of-Paris ornaments, and is not so liable to chip or break if struck with anything.
See also
- BoxBoxBox describes a variety of containers and receptacles for permanent use as storage, or for temporary use often for transporting contents. The word derives from the Greek πύξος , "box, boxwood"....
- Cardboard boxCardboard boxCardboard boxes are industrially prefabricated boxes, primarily used for packaging goods and materials. Specialists in industry seldom use the term cardboard because it does not denote a specific material....
- Egg cartonEgg cartonAn egg carton is a carton designed for carrying and transporting whole eggs. These cartons have a dimpled form in which each dimple accommodates an individual egg and isolates that egg from eggs in adjacent dimples...
- Liquid packaging boardLiquid packaging boardLiquid packaging board is a multi-ply paperboard with high stiffness, strong wet sizing and a high barrier coating. Only virgin paper fibers are used. The barrier coating must hold the liquid and prevent migration of air and flavors through the paperboard....
- PaperboardPaperboardPaperboard is a thick paper based material. While there is no rigid differentiation between paper and paperboard, paperboard is generally thicker than paper. According to ISO standards, paperboard is a paper with a basis weight above 224 g/m2, but there are exceptions. Paperboard can be single...
- Packaging and labellingPackaging and labellingPackaging is the science, art, and technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use. Packaging also refers to the process of design, evaluation, and production of packages. Packaging can be described as a coordinated system of preparing goods for transport,...