COOLING METHOD AND NINE-DOWN PACKAGING CONFIGURATION FOR ENHANCED COOLING OF PRODUCE

摘要

The invention encompasses packaging and cooling methods and systems designed to improve cooling efficiencies, reduce damage to the contents of containers, and increase product packing density. A system of the present invention incorporates baskets loaded into trays and trays loaded in preferred configurations on a pallet. The trays are loaded with baskets arranged in the tray so that ventilation slots and/or channels of the baskets are aligned with tray ventilation openings. Nine (9) trays are loaded onto a standard pallet in a 3 by 3 configuration. Additionally, the trays are arranged so that the tray ventilation openings are in alignment with ventilation openings of other trays of the same layer. This 3 by 3 layer of trays comprises a so-called “nine-down” configuration. As will be discussed below, his configuration has some surprising cooling advantageous standard packaging configurations.