Packaging — Paper, Board & Corrugated

Testing for paper mills, corrugators, box plants and packaging users — bursting strength, crush resistance, Cobb, grammage and transit performance.

Paper is hygroscopic, so every strength figure this sector reports is partly a moisture measurement in disguise — which makes the conditioning room, not the tester, the decisive purchase. IS 1060 conditions at 27 ± 2 °C and 65 ± 2 percent RH, the tropical atmosphere. TAPPI T402 conditions at 23 ± 1 °C and 50 ± 2 percent RH and states plainly that it does not cover tropical atmospheres. The same board tested to both will not give the same edge crush or the same burst, and the gap is not small. A box plant arguing with its customer about ECT is very often arguing about two different rooms. Settle the atmosphere first, then compare the numbers.

Tests run here

  • Bursting strength of paper and of corrugated board
  • Edge crush, flat crush, ring crush and Concora crush
  • Box compression and stacking
  • Cobb water absorbency and grammage
  • Tensile, tear and puncture resistance
  • Moisture content and ply bond
  • Drop, vibration and incline impact on filled packages
  • Seal integrity and leak testing on flexible packs

Governed by

  • IS 1060 — methods of sampling and test for paper and allied products
  • IS 2771 (Part 1) — corrugated fibreboard boxes, specification
  • TAPPI test methods, including T402 for conditioning atmospheres
  • ISO 3037 edgewise crush, ISO 3035 flat crush, ISO 535 Cobb and ISO 536 grammage
  • ASTM D642 — compression testing of shipping containers
  • Food Safety and Standards (Packaging) Regulations 2018 for food-contact packaging
  • NABL accreditation under ISO/IEC 17025
  • plastics-and-rubber
  • physical-properties

What this sector draws on

Send us your test schedule for this laboratory.

We will map it to grades, pack sizes and instrument specifications, and flag anything that is over-specified for what you are actually measuring.