Distribution Testing
From lifesaving medical devices to temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals and everyday consumer goods, distribution testing provides critical insights into your product’s resilience and the ability of its packaging to withstand the rigors of distribution. By replicating the challenges of transportation in a controlled environment—from drops and compression to vibration and impacts—distribution testing helps identify vulnerabilities, safeguard product integrity, and ensure customer satisfaction.
What is Distribution Testing?
Ensuring your packaging protects your products, no matter the journey.
Also known as transport package testing, distribution testing ensures your packaging can handle the challenges of shipping and handling. By evaluating the stressors that impact physical products, packaging materials, and containers during transit, this package testing process identifies vulnerabilities and ensures products arrive at their end destination intact and secure. To ensure product integrity and preserve brand reputation, many big-box retailers and e-commerce sites are gradually requiring vendors to confirm packaging integrity via distribution testing.
Through a series of controlled and repeatable tests, distribution testing replicates real-world hazards—like drops, vibrations, compression, and exposure to extreme temperatures and humidity. These simulations provide critical insights into how packaging performs under various conditions, helping to optimize designs for durability and reliability; enhancing customer satisfaction; and minimizing the risk of costly returns.
At Purple Diamond, our ISO-accredited laboratory is fully equipped to perform a variety of distribution simulations, from road and train travel to air and sea transportation. Guided by ISTA and ASTM test methods, we can test both single parcels and palletized loads. The specific tests conducted vary depending on the product’s nature and the transportation method used, but the goal remains the same: ensuring products are well-protected throughout the supply chain.
Contact Us
Want to learn more about our distribution testing solutions? Fill out the form below!
Compression Testing
Compression testing evaluates a package’s ability to withstand stacking forces during storage, shipping, and handling. Using a box compression tester, our experts can simulate the pressure and weight of stacked boxes or pallets on your packaging in order to determine its maximum compression resistance and long-term stacking strength. With this data, we can determine whether your packaging adequately protects your product under compressive loads.
Relevant Test Methods:
- ISTA 1B - Packaged Products 150 lb or More
- ISTA 2A - Packaged Products 150 lb or Less
- ISTA 3A - Small Parcel Delivery Systems 150 lb or Less
- ASTM D642 - Compression Testing of Shipping Containers
- ASTM D4169 - Performance Testing of Shipping Containers and Systems
- ASTM D1621 - Compressive Properties of Rigid Cellular Plastics
Drop Testing
Drop testing simulates the impacts and falls a package may experience during in order to evaluate how well the packaging protects the products during these sudden and unexpected impacts. Drop testing can be performed repeatedly and at varied impact speeds to best replicate the manual and mechanical scenarios your product may face. Following the drop, corners, edges, and sides of your packaging will be evaluated to detect its potential fault areas.
Relevant Test Methods:
Vibration Testing
Vibration testing simulates non-continuous vibration commonly experienced during rail and road transit. Sensitive medical devices and fragile electronics are especially vulnerable to vibration-related damage. Using vibration tables, accelerometers, and vibration testing software, our experts can identify and address any packaging vulnerabilities that may cause transit-related damage to your product. The data gathered from how your packaged products fare will allow your engineers to design more robust packaging for your product.
Relevant Test Methods:
Incline Impact Testing
Incline impact testing evaluates a package system’s ability to withstand sudden horizontal impacts or crushing forces often experienced by trucks or forklifts. This test is especially useful for large, heavy test samples. An inclined impact tester uses a carriage that propels the test sample down a ramp at a predetermined velocity before hitting a backstop. The sample’s shock data and durability demonstrates how the product would fare in real-world supply chain settings, allowing design engineers to make improvements to either the product and/or the protective packaging as needed.
Relevant Test Methods:
Environmental Conditioning
Environmental conditioning simulates various environmental conditions packages may encounter during transportation and storage, such as temperature fluctuations, humidity changes, and altitude variation. This testing is crucial for evaluating how packaging materials perform under different climatic conditions, helping manufacturers ensure product integrity throughout the distribution cycle. Environments that can be replicated include frozen environments, tropical climates, desert conditions, ambient temperatures, and high altitudes.
Relevant Test Methods:
Ready to put your packaging to the test? Contact our team to get started.
Take the First Step to Safer Shipments
At Purple Diamond, we offer state-of-the-art distribution testing solutions that replicate real-world shipping conditions to ensure your packaging performs flawlessly, no matter the journey.
Why Purple Diamond?
At Purple Diamond, we offer tailored distribution testing solutions designed to replicate real-world shipping conditions and ensure your packaging performs reliably across air, sea, and land transport.
Our team collaborates closely with your engineers to identify the right distribution cycles and assurance levels, guaranteeing compliance with industry standards while enhancing your packaging’s durability and safety. Equipped with cutting-edge laboratories and extensive expertise in ASTM and ISTA methods, we deliver precise, actionable results that help optimize your packaging systems for the most demanding environments.
Accreditations & Affiliations
Explore Other Package Testing Solutions
Looking for a Packaging Partner?
Whether you’re looking for a team of experts to engineer your new packaging product for optimal sustainability, or seeking a team who can ensure your products stay safe and secure during transport, Purple Diamond can help.
