In 1856, tall top hats were the height of fashion for men. Two English gentlemen in the hatter trade, Edward G. Healy and Edward E. Allen, resolved to find a material that would maintain the tall shape, yet was flexible to fit individual noggins. The solution they arrived at was to form paper into pleats, giving it a wavy shape for strength. They fed paper through a very simple hand-cranked machine that had two intersecting fluted rollers, typically used to create ruffled fabric, such as on collars or cuffs. They patented the invention in England, but never made the leap to using their invention to create a shipping box.
American ingenuity was behind the next step forward in the form of a US patent filed in 1871 by Albert L. Jones for “an improvement in paper for packing,” which described the use of “corrugated or crimped sheet of paper to one side of which is attached a flat sheet of paper by pasting” to create an effective cushion for the contents being packed. A common use was to wrap the corrugated paper around fragile items such as bottles or kerosene lamp chimneys.
Three years later, a machine was developed for producing large quantities of corrugated material. That same year, another inventor, Oliver Long, added a liner sheet to the second side, trapping the corrugation in the middle and producing the corrugated material we know today. In 1894, the first corrugated box was manufactured in the US. The cheaper product quickly replaced the previously dominant wooden crates and boxes used to ship products.
Corrugated’s Long Boom
For the past decade, the corrugated packaging sector has stood apart from the ups and downs of the broader general commercial print industry. Corrugated production surged before, during, and after the Covid pandemic shutdown. Every click by an online shopper echoed down the supply chain to a box converter, corrugated sheet production line, kraft linerboard mill, and yes, even to the loggers bringing in the raw timber for pulp. Business was good, which drove a steady stream of mergers and acquisitions.
As we observed as far back as 2015, the transactional activity in the manufacturing of boxes of all sorts was brisk, unlike its troubled cousin, commercial printing. Not only was the box far less susceptible to disruption by the transition of content to online sources, but the inherent recurring nature of packaging production also made the entire box supply chain desirable for investment. (See The Target Report: The Box is in Demand – October 2015.)
Read this full article on Printing Impressions, a publication of PRINTING United Alliance, ASI’s strategic partner.
