A typical enquiry for a returnable box is three lines: dimensions, quantity, material. A supplier can quote from that, and the quote will be for a box that meets the three lines and may well be wrong for the job. Six further pieces of information determine whether the box that arrives works, and none of them are usually offered.
The six that matter
What goes in it, including the sharpest and heaviest item rather than the average. How it gets handled – hands, trolley, forklift, conveyor. How high it is stacked and for how long. Whether it gets washed, and at what temperature. What the environment is – cold store, outdoors, oily, clean area. And how many trips it is expected to survive. Each of those changes the specification, and a supplier who does not ask for them is quoting a catalogue.
Dimensions: internal or external
Say which. An internal dimension is what the part needs; an external dimension is what the pallet and the shelf need. Quoting one and meaning the other is the single most common cause of a box arrival that does not fit. Give both where possible – external envelope plus minimum internal clear dimensions – and the supplier can tell you quickly whether they are achievable together.
Tolerances, because PP moves
Corrugated PP is extruded and cut, and it moves with temperature. A dimension quoted to the millimetre on a six-hundred-millimetre box is not achievable or meaningful. Ask for a stated tolerance and check that it is compatible with your clearances: if a box has to fit a shelf with five millimetres to spare, and the tolerance is plus or minus five millimetres, half the delivery will not fit.
Quantity: first order and annual
Suppliers price tooling and set-up against the first order and unit price against the annual volume. Quoting only one of the two gets a price based on the less favourable assumption. Give both, and say whether the first order is a trial or the start of a fleet – a supplier who knows an order is a trial will often quote a smaller first run at a higher unit price, which is usually the right shape for a trial.
What a good answer looks like
A competent supplier comes back with questions, a proposed wall thickness with a reason, a stated stack height at a stated load, and a lead time split between tooling and production. A supplier who returns a price and nothing else has priced three lines of an email. The same discipline applies to any packaging purchase – see the checklist logic in what to check in a panel supplier.
Send a sample part, not a drawing
Where it is at all possible, send the part. A supplier with the part in hand can tell you things a drawing cannot: whether it will jam in a corner, whether an edge is sharp enough to matter, whether the weight distribution makes the box awkward to carry. These are the things that decide whether the box works, and none of them are visible on a dimensioned sketch.
Where the part cannot be sent – too large, too valuable, not yet available – send the next best thing: a representative part of similar weight, sharpness and envelope, with a note about what is different. The clearer fallback is a photograph with a scale and a note on weight and on the sharpest feature. Any of these beats a line on an email saying “approximately 400 x 300 x 200, five kilograms”, which is what most enquiries contain and which is enough to get a quote and not enough to get the right box.
What we can do
We build PP corrugated turnover boxes to specification and we will ask for the six before quoting. Send us what you have – even if it is only the part and the shelf – and we will tell you what is missing rather than guessing at it.