Quality Standard

Board and paper standard

We use greyboard at 1200 g minimum for any wine box. For spirits, we recommend 1400 g. The facing paper starts at 157 g specialty or coated stock. No recycled greyboard, no high-moisture paper. Those two choices cause most of the warping and corner splitting you see in cheap boxes.

Material selection is part of the quote. Tell us the bottle weight and the box structure, and we'll pick a board that holds the load. A drawer box for a magnum needs more than a lid-and-base for a standard 750 ml. If you ask for a lighter board to save money, we'll tell you what you're trading away. For a two-bottle wooden box with a velvet tray, the greyboard liner still matters. It keeps the tray from shifting when the box is opened and closed. We also check the paper grain direction before cutting. Wrong grain makes the wrap peel at the hinges. That's a failure we see on samples from other suppliers, and we reject it at the plate stage.

Insert and bottle fit checks

Our insert rule is four points of contact, no unsupported neck or shoulder. Velvet trays, EVA foam, blister, or moulded pulp all follow the same rule. The bottle should not rest on its label or the punt.

We check fit three ways. Shake the closed box for ten seconds, no movement. Tilt it 45 degrees, no slide. Invert it, no release. If a check fails, the insert goes back to the tooling stage. A bottle that moves in the box will damage the label or the glass in transit.

For a rigid gift box with a magnetic closure, the insert has to clear the magnet pull. We test that by opening and closing the lid repeatedly after the insert is fitted. If the bottle lifts with the lid, the magnet is too strong or the insert is too shallow. For a drawer box, we check that the bottle doesn't roll when the drawer is pulled out to its stop. That's a detail most buyers don't think about until the box is in a retail display and the bottle tips forward.

Tolerances and colour control

Our control tolerance is plus or minus 1 mm on inserts and plus or minus 2 mm on the box body. For foldable boxes, creases must not crack, magnet position is plus or minus 1 mm, and corners sit at 90 degrees when erected.

Colour is matched to Pantone. You approve a first article, then we sample mid-run. Black, deep blue, and burgundy are the hardest to hold. If the run drifts, we stop and correct. You don't find out when the shipment lands.

On a foldable box, a crease that cracks is a reject. We bend every crease fully on a sample from each batch before we run the full order. If the paper splits, we adjust the scoring depth or change the paper. For magnet closures, we measure the pull force on a regular interval. Too weak and the lid won't stay shut. Too strong and the customer struggles to open it. We set the force to hold the lid closed under its own weight plus a small load. That's a number we worked out from boxes that came back with broken magnets.

In-house pre-shipment checks

Before packing, we run our in-house checks. A 1.2 m six-face drop test with the bottle loaded. Stacking top load of 40 kg or more for 24 hours. Truck and sea vibration simulation, and we look for any internal movement.

These checks are not a third party report. They are what our line does before the boxes leave. If a box fails, we rework it or rebuild it. You get a box that survived the same abuse it will see in a courier van or a container.

The drop test is the one that catches the most failures. A bottle loaded in a rigid box dropped flat on its face can crack the base. We drop each face once, so six drops per box. If the bottle survives but the box corner dents, we check the board thickness and the wrap adhesion. A dented corner on a gift box is a customer return. The vibration test runs at a frequency that matches a truck on a rough road. We load the box with the bottle and a weight on top to simulate a stack. After the test, we open the box and check for label scuffing, insert movement, and any wear on the inside of the lid. If the label has a mark, the insert needs a softer contact point or a different material.

Questions buyers ask