Collective container, collective container blank and collective container kit with individual containers

Abstract

The subject matter of the invention is collective containers used with individual containers, especially for soft fruit and mushrooms. Moreover, the invention provides the collective container blank and the kit that includes it. The collective container can be used in the transport, sales, during harvest and purchase of soft fruit and mushrooms.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims the benefit of priority of European application No. EP17157689.5 filed Feb. 23, 2017 and Poland application No. P-416249 filed Feb. 24, 2016, the contents thereof being hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety for all purposes.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The subject matter of the invention is a collective container used together with individual containers, especially for fruit, vegetables and mushroom, a collective container blank and a collective container kit with individual containers. The collective container can be used during transport, storage, sales, harvest and purchase of fruit, vegetables and mushroom.PRIOR ART[0003]Collective packages used to collect, purchase, sell, transport and store fruit, mushroom and other products requiring transport in containers are often referred to as boxes, crates or, alternatively, containers. Such boxes, crates, containers or collective containers are usually mad...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent is about a container design that uses corrugated board to provide strength and stability. The bottom of the container is made up of two strips of rigid sheet material that adhere to the side walls and external front and back vertical walls. The strips are fixed to the walls using connecting bottom leaves. The orientation of the corrugation in the board is important for the container's strength, with a parallel corrugation length to the shorter side of the base providing the highest strength. The container design allows for palletization up to 16 layers with fruits.

Problems solved by technology

These solutions according to the art do not, however, solve the drawbacks related to:lengthy time of the manual folding process; folding the box according to the art is labour and time consuming and takes about 15 seconds;using an abundance of raw materials to produce a suitable blank; forming proper flaps is possible when using a significant amount of raw materials;cost of transport; when ordering automatically folded boxes, automatic folding results in the box being more structurally stable, but due to the fact that automatic gluing machines are very expensive, thus there is not a lot of them, transport and logistics of empty boxes from distribution centres is very expensive and burdensome, as well as empty boxes take storage space;the lengthy, and thus expensive, process of fruit and vegetables cooling in the boxes.

Fruit and vegetables cooling time inside the box is relatively lengthy, and forced circulation of cool air inside the box is significantly hindered by a closed bottom or insufficient number of vent holes which do not correspond with the holes in the individual containers inserted into collective boxes.

Maintenance of the required temperature of fruit and vegetables in collective boxes is not easy and requires dedicated trucks.

Due to the abovementioned aspects, the process of cooling fruit and vegetables is not easy and is expensive.

The mentioned drawbacks of the prior art containers and packages obstruct their application, especially by soft fruit planters; however, until now, they did not have much of a choice.

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