MARCH 2023
Virginia Tech Confirms that Pallet Design can be used to Reduce Packaging Cost and Increase the Sustainability of Unit Load Designs
The authors are Marshall S White, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Department of Sustainable Biomaterials, Virginia Tech and Laszlo Horvath, Associate Professor and Director of the Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design
Unit Load Research
There are two important principles of unit load design:
1 The cost of the empty packaging on top of the pallet is significantly more than the cost of the pallet.
2 The most important measure of unit load design sustainability is the mass (weight)/use of the empty packaging and pallet.
From these two principles, we know the most effective way to reduce packaging costs in the unit load is to focus on the cost of the packaging on top of the pallet. Typically, this cost reduction will coincide with a reduction in packaging mass, a smaller ratio of packaging weight to product weight, and a more sustainable unit load design.
Research at the Virginia Tech Center for Packaging and Unit Load Design has confirmed that increasing the stiffness of a pallet deck reduces the compression stresses on rigid packaging such as corrugated containers (boxes) and plastic pails. If these packages with product inside, are to be palletized, the
most important design criterion is
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