Question: How much longer do plastic corrugated boxes last than paper corrugated boxes?
Answer: This will depend on both its usage as well as the environment.
In the most common scenarios you can expect the following. You may get longer or shorter usage results depending on the environment, weather and usage or handling situations.
We have seen scenarios where our customers have seen over 100 times the usage of trips that their old paper/fiber boxes had made. There are other cases that saw fewer usages because of the abuse that the boxes or totes take in their system.
Some of our customers have had our plastic containers in use after decades of service.
If you are currently getting more than one use from your paper/fiber corrugated box then you are a perfect candidate to switch to plastic corrugated. The most important thing is that you can reuse the container, tote or tray.
When using plastic corrugated as a storage unit the material id either polypropylene or polyethylene and is unaffected by moisture and most all chemicals so the life in these circumstances could be indefinite.
UV exposure can have an effect on plastics of all kinds. Sun exposure can have adverse effects over time. Even long-term UV lighting can eventually deteriorate plastics although indoor lighting has much less effect than outdoor UV exposure. Even the color of the plastic can determine effects of UV exposure with colors like red being less tolerant to UV lighting.
Bottom line when it comes to durability and long-term saving changing over from your fiber corrugated containers to corrugated plastic ones is a smart investment in the long run.
One Case Study:
Wal-Mart was using a fiber corrugated distribution box with an average usage of 2 ½ trips per container. During the initial case study, we had the same container made from our plastic corrugated making over 80 trips in some cases between Distribution Center and Retail Stores.
