I am looking for 3-bottle pulp shippers to ship DTC shipments. I ordered a trial run of 30 from ULINE and they were garbage, impossible to get the stacked pulp liners apart, and then the boxes wouldn’t close because they were too small for the inserts. I’d also consider full cardboard as I have gotten some of those recently from Ultramarine/Cruse and they seem sturdy and are also recyclable. Anyone have favorites?
As someone who sees and unpacks a lot of wine boxes, take a look at shippers that use thin clear plastic liners. Unlike pulp, the are easy to unstack and take up FAR less space than pulp, and are fully recyclable, at least here in Seattle. You can stack maybe 50 of them in a couple inches of space.
I have also seen some black plastic liners that are similar, I know Longshadows wines use them.
Todd - You might have a look through the vendor list for the upcoming Unified Symposium in Sacramento. I recall seeing several vendors with all kinds of packing materials. Use the keyword search inside the Exhibitor/Supplier Search category here … Trade Show - Unified Wine & Grape Symposium .
Todd,
I get my pulp shippers from Gorilla Shipper. They’re a company in Georgia that sells pulp shippers from California. They also invented their own all corrugated shippers. Both are great products. If you order $550 worth of shippers at once, freight is free.
I also use the plastic shippers Chuck is talking about. They’re from Pride Polymers in Washington. By far, the Pride plastic shippers take up the least amount of room when you’re storing them. The trays also come apart much easier than the pulp shippers.
From my experience, none of the products protects the wine any better than the others, but they all protect the wine very well. I’ve averaged one broken package every 18 months or so, and that goes all the way back to the days when I used styrofoam shippers. I’m almost sure the broken packages are from poor handling rather than a packaging defect.
Ed
Awesome, thanks everyone for the feedback. I found a local all-corrugated purveyor that I could pick up a smaller order at for free, so I am trying those for this next small run. I had seen Gorilla in my research and put together a cart there but shipping was crazy, I guess I missed the free freight option, but I will give them a try next year. My dry-goods storage is not limited, so the size isn’t a consideration right now. I need more barrel storage space before I need to worry about running out of room for bottle pallets and packaging, unfortunately! Maybe Santa will bring me a forklift so I can start stacking.
Todd where are you located?
Spent many a summer fishing in the Shawangunk Kill.
Small world! We are in Pine Bush / Crawford about a mile south of where 52 crosses the Shawangunk Kill. Look us up if you’re ever back in the area!
Will do, thanks