Patent Application
20130015093
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally stackable trays and, more specifically, to such trays suitable for stacking and stacked in displays.
2. Description of Related Art
Displays for use in retail environments for displaying bottles and other items in grocery stores utilize fairly heavy and/or environmentally undesirable materials, including, wood, metal, and plastic. They often have an unwieldy number of parts and require excessive amounts of assembly time and effort. Some displays are not entirely satisfactory from the standpoint of container strength, cost of manufacture, free standing stability, ease of handling and, very importantly, material recyclability. Corrugated paperboard can be susceptible to deformation in general and, particularly, when used to support and display heavy articles such as bottles of soda and the like. Plastic display trays are typically made to hold one size bottle and are not easily disposed of in an environmentally sensitive way.
It is desirable to have display trays with sufficient structural support for stacking and for shipping of the trays loaded with products, including, bottles such as bottles of soda. It is also desirable to have such strong display trays that are comprised of recycled materials, completely recyclable upon end of useful life, refillable at retail outlets, and have a long useful life. It is also desirable to have such strong display trays that are easy and inexpensive to manufacture and displays made from such trays that are easy to assemble. It is also desirable to have displays assembled from such strong display trays that may be loaded with various products having various sizes and shapes.
A stackable display tray includes spaced apart first and second vertical walls extending upwardly from a base wall. The first and second vertical walls include first and second upper ends having first and second tips respectively. Open first and second channels in a bottom of the tray are in line with the first and second tips respectively. The base wall and the spaced apart first and second vertical walls are formed from laminated plies of paperboard.
The first and second upper ends may be tapered and the first and second tips and the open first and second channels may be flat.
An alternative embodiment of the tray includes the first and second tips having first and second tip cross sections and the open first and second channels having first and second channel cross sections. The first and second tip cross sections generally conform in size and shape to the first and second channel cross sections.
The corrugated paperboard may be a double walled corrugated paperboard. The corrugated paperboard may include flutes where a first one of each pair of adjacent ones of the plies angled with respect to the flutes of a second one of the pair. The flutes of a first one of each pair of adjacent ones of the plies may extend in a direction at a right angle to the flutes of a second one of the pair.
Signage or placards may be attached to an outside surface of one or both of the first and second vertical walls. Product may be loaded in the tray and the tray wrapped with plastic shrink wrap film.
The trays may be stacked to form a display. A base may support the stacked display trays and the base may be metallic or a bottommost one of the trays. A first height of the first and second vertical walls in at least a first one of the trays may be different from a second height of the first and second vertical walls in at least a second one of the trays.
The foregoing aspects and other features of the invention are explained in the following description, taken in connection with the accompanying drawings where:
Illustrated in
The first and second vertical walls 18, 20 are mirror images and include first and second tapered upper ends 30, having first and second tips 36, 38 respectively. Referring to
The first and second tapered upper ends 30, 32 and the first and second tips 36, 38 respectively are upper ends of the longitudinally spaced apart first and second vertical walls 18, 20 that interlock with the open first and second channels 40, 42 in the bottom 44 of the tray 10 to provide longitudinal stability between stacked trays 10 in displays 54 such as those illustrated in
An open space 74 between the first and second vertical walls 18, 20 and the bottom 44 of the tray 10 provides a very useful and flexible area to place products such as bottles, cans, boxes, etc. of product for display and shipping. The open space 74 preferably has a rectangular shape to maximize its usefulness. Signage 17 or placards can be attached to an outside surface 15 of one or both of the first and second vertical walls 18, 20 of display tray as illustrated in
Different trays 10 may have different heights H and a bottommost 66 one of the trays 10 may used as a base 58 of the display 54 as illustrated in
The trays 10 are nestable as illustrated in
Trays 10 may be loaded with product such as soda bottles 70 and wrapped with material such a plastic shrink wrap film 68 for shipping as illustrated in
The trays 10 can be readily recycled using existing paper recycling methods which are currently available extensively. The laminated paperboard trays 10 offer the longevity of displays made from metal and plastic without the disadvantages and expense of tooling and manufacture. Displays made from the stackable laminated paperboard trays are capable of supporting weights far in excess of typical corrugated paperboard displays.
The corrugated paperboard 14 used in the tray 10 is preferably double walled with a kraft finish, which was chosen for its sustainability properties. Corrugated paperboard is often made of recycled paper and most commonly includes outer and inner liners and a corrugating or fluted medium layer glued between the liners. This sandwich-type construction gives corrugated board its excellent rigidity and structural strength as well as its unique cushioning characteristics. Each tray 10 is illustrated herein as being made from substantially identical plies 12 as illustrated in
Preferably, flutes 21 of a first one 23 of each pair 29 of adjacent ones of the plies 12 extend in a direction at a right angle A (90 degrees) or is perpendicular to the corrugated flutes 21 of a second one 27 of the adjacent ones of the plies 12 as illustrated in
While there have been described herein what are considered to be preferred and exemplary embodiments of the present invention, other modifications of the invention shall be apparent to those skilled in the art from the teachings herein and, it is therefore, desired to be secured in the appended claims all such modifications as fall within the true spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, what is desired to be secured by Letters Patent of the United States is the invention as defined and differentiated in the following claims.
