How Cardboard Came To Be.

Cardboard is a stiff or semi-rigid paper product made from a mix of wood pulp and recycled paper. Cardboard comes in two main types:

Paperboard. This thick paper is usually used for things like cereal boxes, playing cards, juice boxes, book covers, and greeting cards. It's thicker than regular paper and usually at least 0.25 millimeters thick. ISO guidelines say that paperboard is made of Paper Box With Handle  with "a base gram weight of 224 g/m2 or more." 

Cardboard with ridges. This is the kind of cardboard that most boxes are made of. It has a wavy layer of waxy paper in the middle and two flat pieces of thick paper on either side. Most of the strength of corrugated cardboard boxes comes from the layer with the flutes.  

The first cardboard boxes were made by hand, but at the start of the 20th century, tools were invented that could make a lot of them at once. This made cardboard boxes easier to find and cheaper to buy.  

From Silkworms To Boxes For Shipping

In 1817, the English company M. Tiverton & Son is said to have made the first paperboard box for sale. At about the same time, paperboard was also being made in Germany. 

In the 1840s, silk makers in France started putting Bombyx mori moths and their eggs in paperboard boxes to ship them. This was the first time paperboard boxes were used in transportation. The French region of Valréas became a major center for making cardboard because it was close to woods where pine, spruce, and fir trees, which are used to make paperboard, grew in large numbers.

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Corrugated paper box with handle  was first used as a stiffener for the tall hats that were popular at the time. It was invented in England in 1856. But corrugated boxboard wasn't used to ship things until December 20, 1871, when it was invented. Albert Jones of New York was given the patent for corrugated board with just one side. Jones wrapped bottles and the chimneys of glass lanterns in corrugated board.

Robert Gair, a businessman who was born in Scotland, came up with the idea of a pre-cut cardboard  custom mailer 

box in 1890. Gair came up with his idea by chance while he was working in Brooklyn as a printer and papermaker. During the printing of an order of seed bags, a metal ruler that he usually used to fold the bags moved out of place and cut through them. Gair found that if he cut and folded the cardboard at the same time, he could make  custom mailer boxes that were already folded and the right size for the customer to use. 

The Cardboard Box That We All Know And Love Was Made.

Boxes made of cardboard are everywhere.

The simple cardboard box has been a mainstay of the shipping business for many years. It is an important part of Australia's logistics business and the movement of goods all over the world. Statista said that the amount of cardboard made around the world in 2020 would be 66 million tonnes. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, which caused a huge rise in e-Commerce, the world made 72 million tonnes of cardboard in 2022. That's a LOT of cardboard!

The Largest Box In The World

People will do whatever it takes to set a record. So it's not surprising that someone tried to make the biggest cardboard box in the world. It was built in 2016 at a packing plant run by the Dutch company Smurfit Kappa in the Netherlands. The big Custom mailer  box was 40 meters by 20 meters, so it wouldn't fit through the side door of a HiAce van, but it was still a sight to see.   

The Cathedral Made Of Cardboard

After the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake, which destroyed the old stone cathedral in the center of the biggest city on New Zealand's South Island, a makeshift cathedral made of cardboard tubes was built in its place. The people of Christchurch called it the "Cardboard Cathedral." It was built by the Japanese builder Shigeru Ban, who often uses paper, cardboard, and other unusual materials in his designs.

The building he made is amazing to look at, with rows of cardboard tubes rising up to make an A-frame inside that is lit by natural light and decorated glass. If you click here, you can take a walk of the Cardboard Cathedral without actually going there. 

Put Into Boxes And Ready To Go.

In Australia, cardboard boxes are an important part of the delivery business. They can be recycled and made into any shape or size, so no matter what you want to ship, store, guard, or hold, there is a way to do it with cardboard.

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Cardboard is easy to ship and store because it is light, doesn't hurt the environment, and lasts for a long time. So the next time you're in your warehouse looking at neat stacks of boxes or driving through the streets of an Australian city with a truck full of goods in those brown paper  box with handle cubes, you can think about how you're part of a long tradition that goes back to the middle of the 1800s and will continue for a long time to come. 

And, as always, the team at TransVirtual will keep thinking outside the Custom Mailer Box to come up with delivery management solutions that keep your shipments moving smoothly and your customers happier than a box of birds.