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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

The importance of containers in business

By Katie Hill


Container is an object used for holding of goods, especially for transport or storage. These containers are also designed to facilitate and optimize the carriage of goods by one or more modes of transportation without intermediate handling of the contents and are equipped with features permitting ready handling and transfer of the goods from one mode to another. Containers may be fully enclosed behind doors, open top, refrigerated, tank, open rack, gondola, flat rack, and of other designs.

In the kitchen, the back of house operations takes place and here many different kinds of containers are needed primarily for the storage of food. Here, everything from 100-lb. bags of flour to open cases of ketchup need to go into something as safe and easily accessible as a container.

There are as many types of containers as there are needs to carry and store things and they are generally made up of plastic. Increasingly, foodservice operators are turning to plastic containers. Stainless-steel and other metal containers have their own place, but the advantages of plastic containers in many storage situations outweigh those of metal.

Plastic containers are useful for refrigerating foods, either in walk-in coolers or reach-in refrigerators. These containers and their lids are usually clear or translucent, so the contents can be easily identified without removing the lid - a key element in preventing cross-contamination. Plastic containers with black bases and clear tops contribute to a nice front-of-the-house presentation and, therefore, can go directly from the refrigerator to a salad or deli bar. They come in hundreds of sizes and shapes.

Plastic containers are far more cost-effective than metal ones, they are also durable and last longer, they are also easy to stack as well as store. Furthermore plastic containers are easy to clean with smooth edges, eliminating the chances of getting injured. They are also safe to use in the dishwasher. Other advantages include the following: they are light weight, chemically resilient, can easily be shaped, durable, easy to color in the mass, thermically insulating, acoustically insulating, electrically insulating, most importantly energy saving.

The key disadvantage lies in the fact that when melted, the compound is indestructible and gives off a very harmful gas dangerous to both our health and environment. Furthermore the fundamental ingredient in plastic is oil, and with this depleting fast, it is a cause for concern. Scientists now need to develop alternatives and are looking into producing plastics with vegetable oil and other organic matter. This means that the plastic is more likely to be degradable, so it will be less of an environmental concern in the future.




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