A bottle crate or beverage crate is a container

Shipping container

A shipping container is a container with strength suitable to withstand shipment, storage, and handling. Shipping containers range from large reusable steel boxes used for intermodal shipments to the ubiquitous corrugated boxes...

 used for transport of beverage containers

Bottle

A bottle is a rigid container with a neck that is narrower than the body and a "mouth". By contrast, a jar has a relatively large mouth or opening. Bottles are often made of glass, clay, plastic, aluminum or other impervious materials, and typically used to store liquids such as water, milk, soft...

. In the present day they are usually made of plastic

Plastic

A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs...

, but before the widespread use of plastic they tended to be made of wood or metal.

Beverage crates began to be made of HDPE in the 1950s.

Such crates can be surprisingly long-lived. In the 1980s in Sweden, a take-back campaign was organized, when 25-bottle crates were replaced by the more ergonomic 20-bottle crates. Some of the crates returned for recycling had been in use since the 1960s.

Because manufacturers avoid lead-based and cadmium-based pigmentations, in response to legislation and public opinion, they have had to resort to other methods of colouring HDPE crates. In Japan, since the early 1970s, HDPE bottle crates have been pigmented with a variety of perylene

Perylene

Perylene or perilene is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon with the chemical formula C20H12, occurring as a brown solid. It or its derivatives may be carcinogenic, and it is considered to be a hazardous pollutant. In cell membrane cytochemistry, perylene is used as a fluorescent lipid probe...

, quinacridone

Quinacridone

Quinacridone is a red powder. It is an organic compound with the molecular formula C20H12N2O2. It is used as a pigment; analogs bearing this motif are known as quinacridones.-Quinacridones:...

, azo

Azo compound

Azo compounds are compounds bearing the functional group R-N=N-R', in which R and R' can be either aryl or alkyl. IUPAC defines azo compounds as: "Derivatives of diazene , HN=NH, wherein both hydrogens are substituted by hydrocarbyl groups, e.g. PhN=NPh azobenzene or diphenyldiazene." The more...

 condensation, and isoindolinone pigments. Japanese manufacturers have modified these in order to control nucleating

Nucleation

Nucleation is the extremely localized budding of a distinct thermodynamic phase. Some examples of phases that may form by way of nucleation in liquids are gaseous bubbles, crystals or glassy regions. Creation of liquid droplets in saturated vapor is also characterized by nucleation...

behaviour, and have improved weathering performance and impact-resistance properties by making the light-stabilisization systems more efficient.