Corrugated cartons of different types, size, and capacity are currently in use, in the market and their quality has not been tested and documented so far. The present investigation was carried out to determine the engineering specifications, and to evaluate the transport, and storage worthiness of CFB cartons. The compression strength of different CFB cartons both new and old, during transit or storage, and moisture gain during storage were determined. It was observed that most of the CFB cartons conformed to standard specifications like liner (paper) used was of A or B class, cartons made of fiber board, with 38–51 flutes in number, flutes of B, C and E class and weight (grammage) of the paper ranged from 120 to 332 g/sqm. Package test showed that CFB cartons with standard specification had lower (7.8–8.4%) decrease in compression strength during transit compared to locally made boxes (17–21.5%). During storage, these cartons lost about 61–71% compression strength. The compression strength of standard package remained much higher compared to locally made before and after transit or storage. The standard CFB cartons gained lower moisture (−10%) compared to locally made (−13%). Thus, it is recommended that cartons with standard specifications should be used, because, such packages with lower ply rating would have much higher compression strength compared to locally made besides saving in weight added to transport trucks during transit and lower stack weight in storage, thus help in improving quality and storage life of horticultural crops.
Package, corrugated, carton, compression strength
