Medical Plastic Tray

Buying guide

A medical tray is a moulding, not a bag: the shape decides what fits in it, and the wall thickness decides whether it survives being stacked. Rich Medical supplies eight tray moulds from 27×19×4 cm down to 11×7.8×3.3 cm, in transparent and white, from 136 to 1,000 pieces per carton.

Eight moulds, and what each one is for

The 24# tray at 27×19×4 cm is the large dressing tray that holds a pack's full content list. 32# at 18.2×13.5×14.2 cm is the deep tray for tall items such as gallipots and forceps. 34# at 22.7×17.7×5 cm and 35# at 27.5×22.2×6.1 cm are the mid-depth trays used in procedure packs. 27#, 37# and 38# are the small trays at 11.5×8.4×0.6, 11.0×7.8×3.3 and 11.5×11.5×2.3 cm — the sizes used for a single instrument, a suture set or a small dressing.

Transparent or white

Transparent trays let a nurse see the contents without opening the pack, which is why they dominate dressing and procedure packs. White trays hide staining and are used where the tray is visible to a patient or on a retail shelf. Both are the same polymer and the same wall; the difference is the masterbatch.

Nesting, carton count and freight

Trays nest, so the carton count is a function of nesting depth: 1,000 pieces to a carton for the smallest moulds, 600 for 38#, 500 for 32# and 33#, 270 for 34#, 200 for 24# and 136 for the largest 35# mould. The largest tray ships 136 to a carton at 570×290×240 mm, which is a small cube for a large item — worth knowing before you compare a per-tray price that ignores freight.

Trays inside your own pack

Most trays are consumed inside a sterile dressing pack rather than sold loose. If you assemble packs, we supply trays in the mould your pack was designed around, and where the pack is new we can work from your content list to the nearest existing mould rather than asking you to pay for a new tool. New moulds are quoted separately with a tooling cost.

Wall thickness and the load test

A tray that flexes when lifted spills its contents. We check wall thickness at the rim and the base of a sample per batch, and we load the tray with the intended pack content to confirm it can be carried one-handed. If a tray is to be wrapped and sterilised, the wrap and the EO cycle are validated with the tray in place.

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