Why should you downgauge your film?

What is stretch film?

Stretch film is an elastic film that is unwrapped from a roll, often stretched (either manually or mechanically), and wrapped around a unit load to maintain load stability and provide product protection during transport and storage. The film acts like a compression bandage around the entire unit load, creating a “hugging” force to keep everything together and stable.¹

Benefits of using stretch film

Stretch wrap film is the lowest cost packaging solution for unitizing a pallet. With proper containment, damage is reduced and product is protected throughout its distribution journey². Stretch film is available in transparent for easy scanning and opaque varieties to conceal products if desired. Packaging pallets in stretch film also makes tampering immediately evident. ‘’Containment force is affected by the amount of pre-stretch and post-stretch applied to the film through different settings on the wrapping machine³.’’

Conventional Stretch Film

Standard industry film that has been used for many pallet wrapping applications over the years. It has approximately 3 different layers of resins and materials.

High Performance Stretch Film

This film has over 40 layers of different plastics and resins. The technology is improving every day. After wrapping a pallet, the wrap will continue to tighten and shrink back to its original form like an elastic band. By doing so, it continues to hold its retention. The force will get stronger after the pallet leaves the machine so you can guarantee no shifting in your load.

A conventional 80 gauge film can be potentially replaced by a 40 or 45 gauge next generation film which potentially cuts your plastic consumption by half. This changes your loads from 8 ounces of film to 3 ounces of film⁴.

ROI of downgauging

By using a lower gauge film, you can save over 50% compared to using higher gauge of pallet stretch film. For example, the reduction in film thickness has enabled one of our customers in the food production to reduce its plastic consumption by 37%, while saving several thousand dollars each year.⁵