Packaging Dishes For Shipping Purposes: Tips For Success

Dishes are one of the most challenging types of items to ship safely, but with proper packaging techniques, you can protect dishes during the shipping process. These tips will help you package your dishes safely so that they'll reach their destination intact.

Pick the Right Cardboard Box

Start your packing process with a double-walled corrugated box. The extra thickness in double-walled corrugated boxes helps protect the dishes while they're in transit.

Fill the Bottom and Sides with Unprinted Newsprint Paper

Unprinted newsprint paper is a good void-fill for dishes because it won't shift as much as packaging peanuts during delivery. Ball up the newsprint and line the bottom of the box until it forms an unmovable cushion in the bottom of the box. If the newsprint is easily shifted around in the bottom, put more inside the box. Once you start filling the box with dishes, fill the sides with balled up newsprint.

Separate Each Piece

Wrap each piece individually either with newsprint or with polyethylene sheeting. Use tape to hold the wrapping around each piece. Protect all edges when wrapping dishes. Do not leave any edges exposed during shipping.

Limit Stacks

One of the advantages of dishes is that many of the pieces can be stacked on top of one another, meaning that large dishes sets can be shipped in relatively compact boxes. However, stacked dishes can be heavy, which puts a lot of pressure on the dishes at the bottom of the stack. Limit the size of each stack being packed. If the stack cannot be easily lifted, it is too heavy to ship.

Separate stacks inside the box by compartmentalizing the inside of the box. If your company frequently ships dishes sets of the same size, order custom-made double-walled corrugated boxes with different compartments that will enable you to keep stacks of dishes separate from one another.

Use Bubble Wrap for Extra Fragile Items

Not all dishes are equally durable. It's important to recognize the fragility of certain items to ensure that these pieces are treated appropriately. The following types of dishes can be considered extra fragile and should be treated as such:

• Antique porcelain
• Chipped or cracked pieces
• Pieces with fine, thin edges
• Bone china (so fine it's translucent when held up to the light)

In addition, hand-made items should also be treated as extra fragile, simply because hand-made ceramics can never be truly replaced when broken. For these extra special cases, use bubble wrap to wrap each individual piece in the shipment. Wrap each piece until the bubble wrap is thick enough that the actual edges of the dishes can't be felt through the wrapping. Bubble wrap is only used in the case of fragile items because it's thicker and will take up more room in the box, making the overall shipment larger and bulkier. To learn more, contact someone like Associated Paper & Supply.