On 3 September 2009, ION Television from New York built a huge cardboard box in Times Square to mark the premiere of their new murder mystery series, Durham County. The finished item, which measured 12.88 x 4.85 x 2.45 metres is officially the biggest ever cardboard box and was roughly the size of the average New York studio flat. The previous record was made by Dutch company Smurfit Kappa Van Dam Golfkarton in 2007 and measured a mere 10.04 x 4.02 x 2.2 metres.

Incidentally, ION subsequently filled their box with biodegradable loosefill and 20 contestants plunged in, each trying to find a small key which represented a $100,000 prize. This competition was packaging products heaven!

Are these boxes big enough for you?

Although we do stock some fairly huge cardboard boxes, we don’t have any big enough for a New Yorker to live in. The largest ones we have are triple wall export boxes which measure 1190 x 990 x 830mm. That might sound puny in comparison to those we’ve been talking about, but it’s actually a decent size; it’s also just the right size to fit on a standard UK pallet, which makes things a lot easier if you’re planning on putting something in your box and moving it (which is the usual idea when it comes to export).

Being able to actually move a loaded box is a very important point and one that people can sometimes forget about. Our largest single wall boxes are 1000 x 500 x 500mm, but being single wall, will only hold up to 10kg each. So, if you were planning on using them as removals boxes, for example, you’d really only want to fill them with duvets and the like.

When it comes to double wall, we can go even bigger – 1180 x 780 x 800mm – and they’ll hold much more weight, up to 30kg. But, using the house moving boxes example again, if you fill them with books and ask your removals man to take them to your new home, he’ll just quote you the cost of his last chiropracter bill and leave you to repack them in something smaller.

If not, just ask!

We specialise in custom cardboard boxes so, even though we don’t stock anything bigger than those mentioned, we are willing and able to make them. But we need to make sure that the person asking for them doesn’t have unreasonable expectations of what a box can do. So, if we are asked to quote for extra large cardboard boxes, we try to find out what the Customer actually wants them for.

Sometimes the answer can be surprising.

I took a call once from someone who wanted a box large enough for his daughter to play in. She was, he said, obsessed with them. He obviously loved her and wanted to indulge her, but not enough, as it turned out, to warrant the cost of one very, very big box.

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Dave Smith

With a background that has included spells in marketing and editorial management in the publishing and performing arts industries, Dave is now a valued member of Davpack’s marketing team, where he is our lead blogger and senior copywriter. Still relatively new to the business, he will be aiming to look at the world of cardboard boxes and packaging materials from a slightly different angle to the usual. Davpack

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