Italian Standard UNI 9151– a New Approach to the Design of Industrial Wood Packaging

The Italian wood packaging industry occupies a leading role in Europe and focuses its production on a collection of reference standards that describe the fundamental principles for designing industrial packaging made with lumber, plywood and OSB. The national standard framework, mainly based on UNI 9151 and UNI 10858, has been developed from the need for containers for the shipment of machines and equipment of any size, shape and weight in the global market. The main aim is to ensure maximum protection of goods and safety of operators in charge of the handling and transport of wooden packaging (boxes, crates, etc.). As for structural uses in building, the wood packaging industry adopted the concept of allowable stress design for approximately 50 years. Recently, the introduction of the limit states design according to the Eurocode 5 (EN 1995-1-1) and the availability of CE marked products have offered an opportunity to optimize the design not only of timber structures but also of some critical applications in the field of industrial packaging. In this context, a great effort has recently been dedicated to update the above mentioned national standards in order to implement them with the introduction of CE marked lumber and wood-based panels. The present paper describes the Italian standard framework for the industrial wood packaging and illustrates its evolution and new opportunities.