Bottle pack crate and bottle pack therefor

A crate for at least six bottles which is capable of crating bottles held in one or more partitioned packs removable from the crate so that the bottles can be held in the pack during loading into the crate and removal therefrom and is also, alternatively, capable of crating unpacked individual bottles without allowing contact of bottles with each other, said crate comprising a lattice-work crate bottom and upstanding side walls forming a rectangular enclosure comprising:

• a plurality of clusters of bottle-separating pillars, extending upward from the crate bottom, each pillar cluster being spaced from the crate wall and composed of at least one pair of closely spaced pillars, the pillars of the same cluster being of similar shape and approximately the same size and being separated over substantially all of their height by at least one narrow substantially vertical-sided slot-like gap running parallel to a pair of said crate side walls for receiving bottle pack partitions,
• said pillar clusters being provided at least at two locations on the bottom of said crate, each said location of a pillar cluster defining adjacent cell corner boundaries of four bottle-receiving areas, and the lateral surface of each of said pillars, which surface faces away from the center of the cluster to which the pillar belongs and towards the center of one of said bottle-receiving areas, having a concave portion concave with a smaller radius of curvature than the distance to a vertical axis through said bottle receiving area and presenting substantially vertical edges respectively at each side of the concave portion for engagement of a bottle by both of said edges.