Storage and stacking tray for articles.

摘要

A thermo-formed tray (3) carries staggered rows of bottles (1) as one of five such trays stacked one upon the other. The tray (3) is stacked on the tops of bottles (1) of the tray immediately below, with the tops engaged in channels (9) of the tray's under-surface (7). The closed-end channels (9) are defined by troughs (6) and (10) in an upper-surface (5) of the tray (3) that is otherwise flat within a peripheral wall (4). The troughs (6) are of short lengths so that the walls (8) of the channels (9) are interrupted to relieve frictional resistance against removal of the tray (3) from the bottles (1) below, and in regions (11) are omitted altogether to allow the tray to be lifted by suction pads. An orderly array of the bottles (1) in maintained in spite of the lack of row-constraint on the tops of the bottles (1) where the channel walls (8) are interrupted in both these ways, by virtue of abutment of the bottles (1) upon one another within their rows and also between adjacent rows. As an alternative (Figure 5), troughs are omitted other than along the sides (26) of the array and at the ends of the rows (30). <IMAGE>