Most breakages are not caused by rough couriers. They are caused by a parcel that let the product move, or a box that gave way at the wrong moment. The good news is that both are largely in your hands. Here is a practical way to pack fragile items so they arrive in one piece, without wrapping every order like a museum piece.
Start with the box, not the filler
Protection starts with a box that fits. A box that is too large lets the product slide and gather speed before it hits a wall, and no amount of filler fully fixes that. A box that is too tight leaves no room for cushioning at all. Our guide to choosing the right box size walks through measuring properly.
One practical point: our boxes are manufactured with a tolerance of 10 to 20mm either way. If you are packing something delicate with a snug fit, do not rely on the dimensions alone. Order a blank sample for a couple of pence and test it with your real product before you commit to a print run.
Know what your box is made of
Our boxes use E-flute 1.6mm corrugated board, which is rigid enough for most small parcels while staying light for postage. That strength comes from the corrugated layer holding its shape, so your job is to keep the product away from the walls and corners where a knock lands first. If you want the full picture on board types, our packaging materials guide explains the differences in plain English.
Wrap, suspend, fill
A simple three-step routine works for most fragile products.
- Wrap the item itself. Give it its own protective layer so it never touches another item or the box directly. Bubble wrap suits awkward shapes, and you will find it among our other packaging supplies.
- Hold it away from the walls. Aim for the product to sit in the middle of the box with cushioning on every side, including top and bottom.
- Fill the remaining gaps. Anything that can still shift needs more filler, until the contents feel fixed in place.
Our void fill comparison helps you choose between shredded paper, bubble wrap and air packaging for the job.
Use packaging shaped for the product
For regular, breakable items, packaging made for the product beats generic filler. Our inflatable air packaging covers bottles, ceramics, laptops and phones, and it is inflated with an air pump, so it holds the item away from the box walls rather than just filling space. For glass, our bottle packaging range includes corrugated and Flexi-Hex sleeves that give each bottle its own protective cell.
Shredded paper, such as our ZigZag range, is lovely for presentation and for filling gaps, but treat it as the finishing layer for fragile goods rather than the only protection.
Do the shake test
Pack one real order exactly as you plan to ship it, close the box and give it a firm shake. If you can hear or feel anything move, it will move in transit. Add filler or rethink the fit, then test again. Use the real product, not a stand-in, because weight and shape change the result. It takes two minutes and is the cheapest breakage prevention there is.
Does a Fragile label help?
It can remind handlers to take care, and we stock packing tape in the range, including warning tape such as Fragile and Handle With Care tape, which you can see in our packaging tape collection. But treat it as a reminder, not a safeguard. Courier networks move huge volumes, so the packing has to survive on its own merits. Our warning tape is a standard stock product and is not printed to order.
Where printing fits in, and where it does not
If you are printing your box, a few honest limits are worth knowing. We print onto pre-manufactured stock packaging, in pre-defined print areas only, so we cannot print across the entire outside of a box. Printing is full colour water-based digital inkjet, with no white ink, so white in your artwork shows as the bare colour of the material. On brown kraft, that means brown. Colour can vary slightly on an uneven kraft surface, and we do not guarantee exact Pantone matches.
The upside is that a simple, contained logo on a sturdy postal cardboard box looks confident, and it leaves the box structure untouched. You can see print areas in the artwork tool on each product page, and our FAQ page covers the details. We also do not process a full order until you have approved a printed sample, so you see the result before it goes into production.
The short version
Choose a box that fits, wrap the product, keep it off the walls, fill every gap and shake-test the result. Do those five things and most fragile goods will travel well. If a product is especially valuable or an awkward shape, test one real parcel before you scale up.
