Distillery packaging boxes that carry the bottle to trade

What must distillery packaging boxes survive?

A case pack is handled long before it reaches a shelf. It gets filled on a line, palletised, stacked, trucked over rough road, and often held through a monsoon warehouse before dispatch to trade. The bottle inside is glass with a liquid weight, so the box has to carry a real load and hold every bottle apart from its neighbour. Distillery packaging boxes fail at the weakest of those stages, not the average one.

• Line filling: the case is packed fast, so flaps and partitions have to open square and seat the bottle first time.
• Stacking: lower cases in a pallet carry the full column above them, which sets the ply.
• Transit vibration: road shock rattles glass against glass unless a partition grid keeps each bottle in its own cell.
• Monsoon warehousing: humid air softens board over weeks, so wet-season stock needs a heavier wall and dry storage.
• Trade handling: the last leg is manual, so clear print and honest strength matter at the counter.

A case shipper is not judged over one drop. It is judged over a stacked pallet, a rough truck and a humid month in store.

How do bottle partition grids work?

A partition is a die-cut grid of interlocking corrugated strips that drops into the case and splits it into cells, one bottle per cell. It stops glass touching glass, absorbs vibration and helps the case carry the stack. The grid is named by its layout: a 3x2 holds 6, a 3x3 holds 9, a 3x4 holds 12. These are illustrative standards. The real grid is cut to your bottle diameter and height, so a bottle partition box seats your product snugly rather than a stock size.

Cell size is set by your bottle, not by the grid name. Share the bottle diameter, height and fill weight and the partition is die-cut to hold that exact bottle with no slack. Dividers can also run one way only where a product ships in trays rather than upright cells.

What board and ply suit a case shipper?

Board guidance here follows our materials page. The board is corrugated recycled kraft, run as 3 ply single wall, 5 ply double wall or 7 ply triple wall. Typical weights are about 420 g/sqm at 3 ply, about 700 at 5 ply and about 980 at 7 ply. For filled bottles the working default is 5 ply, with 7 ply where the case is heavy, deep in the stack or held through the wet season.

Honest limit: plain recycled kraft is not waterproof, and monsoon humidity weakens board over time. Keep stock off the floor and covered, run a heavier ply in the wet months, and lean on ply and partitions rather than expecting bare board to shrug off water. A physical sample is approved before any run, so you hold the real board first.

What is in our line, and what is not?

We are direct about scope so nobody orders the wrong thing. We supply corrugated shippers, partitions and dividers with flexo print; premium gravure-printed mono cartons are outside our current line. That means we are the right supplier for the outer case that carries and protects the bottle, and the wrong supplier for the printed retail sleeve that sits on a bar shelf. If you need both, we build the shipper and partition and you source the mono carton elsewhere.

This suits liquor packaging boxes, brewery packaging and case packing boxes where the priority is protection, stacking strength and a clean flexo mark for line and warehouse identification, not a premium print finish.

What does a case pack cost?

Below is a worked example, not a quote. The figures are per case at 1,000 quantity, on 5 ply double wall, before the partition is added. The band moves because recycled kraft trades with the market, so the engine returns a range and a human pins the exact number for your run.

Prices attract 5% GST (HSN 4819); a GST invoice is issued with every order.

• Bands are per case at 1,000 quantity and cover the shipper only; partition grids are quoted alongside on your bottle spec.
• The 12 bottle carton box band assumes a 14 x 11 x 10 inch case; a larger bottle raises the blank area and the band.
• The 6 bottle case band assumes a 10 x 7 x 10 inch case, a common trade and sampling size.
• Move to 7 ply for heavy cases or monsoon storage and the band rises with the board weight.
• Enter your exact size, ply and quantity at /quote for a live band, and a human confirms usually in minutes, always within 24 hours.

How the account runs after the first order: samples first, held specs for repeat runs, GST invoice every order. You approve a physical case and partition before the run, we hold the approved spec so repeat orders match, and every dispatch carries a GST invoice.

Frequently asked questions