Archive: May 2012

The Need for Proper Insulation in Pharmaceutical Packaging

Pharmaceutical Products

When it comes to pharmaceuticals, you can never be too careful in terms of shipping, especially when it comes to transporting medicine over long Interstate distances. That’s the premise that a whole specialized transportation industry has been developed around. At any moment of the day in North America, cargo trucks with specific, temperature-controlled semi-trailers are hauling several metric tons of pharmaceuticals from factory-floor to drugstore counter.  The reason for these trucks being meticulously temperature-controlled is on account of the medicine they carry. Even the most innocuous, over-the-counter drugs can be rendered ineffective (or worse)
if they are exposed to too much heat during the course of shipment.

Pharmaceutical packaging and partitioning are themselves essential parts of ensuring product quality. The key to designing packaging and partitioning for pharmaceuticals is making sure they are insulated properly. Without the right level of insulation – especially when it comes to interior partitioning and layer padding – the corrugated containers being transported can soak up an excess amount of heat. If that happens, then the drugs are most often rendered forfeit, and both drugstore and drug manufacturer lose a huge amount of profit.

At M&M Box Partitions, we provide customized die-cut insert and layer padding for the pharmaceutical industry. With a host of different types of paper for inserts and layering, we guarantee that our products will protect yours with the utmost care and deliberation.

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Chipboard Stages a Retro-Revival for Itself

The humble and omnipresent material known as “chipboard,” or “particle board,” is making a comeback for itself in some unlikely, even fashionable, venues. Used in packaging and package partitioning since its inception (chipboard is one of the primary materials we use in our box partitioning here at M & M), as well as in scrapbooking and frame-building, chipboard is “making a comeback” as a vintage means of decorating everything from corporate office spaces to Brooklyn, Chicago, and East End London dive barsGoogle’s new research campus in London, for instance, relies heavily on chipboard for its new wall design. The chipboard is supposed to project a raw, urban, and grittily trend-setting image for the giant computer company. Since a vast number of Google’s employees are in their 20s and 30s, this atmosphere has been built in hopes of being “inspirational” to those who work there.

Chipboard

Additionally, chipboard is staging a retro-revival for itself in other urban settings, such as in trendy restaurants and bars. The Alibi, one of East London’s current hottest dance venues, is essentially a dive bar with walls entirely made of chipboard. In America, it’s catching on as well. Within our own Chicago city limits, one can see “chipboard chic” alive and well at new restaurants and pubs in Bucktown, Ukrainian Village, and Wicker Park. In Brooklyn, as well, the Williamsburg, East Williamsburg, and Bushwick neighborhoods have all developed a love for party-friendly particle board.

All of this is, of course, a passing phenomenon. Chipboard will continue to drive the packaging and partitioning industries in America and throughout the world. But as a reflection of the still considerable might (and storied history) of concentrated industry in cities, the grit and urban associative-ness of chipboard will continue to thrive, regardless of how it’s packaged.

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