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Stretch Film

Stretch film is a highly stretchable plastic film that is wrapped around items. The elastic recovery keeps the items tightly bound. In contrast, shrink wrap is applied loosely around an item and shrinks tightly with heat.
Stretch films are made from linear low-density polyethylene resins. Since its early introduction in the early 70’s, stretch film has become the most important method of unitizing product loads for transport. There are a number of key features for this including:
  • It is the most economical method of unitizing
  • More details of these and other unitizing features.
  • The optics that allow for customers and shippers the ability to identify the product while also keeping it clean.
  • The protection from dust and damage it provides versus other unitizing methods.

Materials

The most common stretch wrap material is linear low-density polyethylene or LLDPE, which is produced by copolymerization of ethylene with alpha-olefins, the most common of which are butene, hexene and octene. The use of higher alpha-olefins (hexene or octene) gives rise to enhanced stretch film characteristics, particularly in respect of elongation at break and puncture resistance. Other types of polyethylene and PVC can also be used. Many films have about 500% stretch at break but are only stretched to about 100 – 300% in use. Once stretched, the elastic recovery is used to keep the load tight.
There are two methods of producing stretch wrap.

Functions

In pallet unitizing, stretch wrap can have several functions:
  • Improved stability of products or packages, forming a unit load
  • More efficient handling and storage of unit loads
  • Some degree of dust and moisture protection
  • Some degree of tamper resistance and resistance to package pilferage
  • Some degree of sun protection (UV stretch wraps

Making sure cartons stay on the pallet is an important consideration in warehouse distribution, especially as the demands for increased throughput continues to rise.

Types of Stretch Film

There are many brands and configurations of stretch wrap film in the market today, as a matter of fact there are too many and its confusing to say the least. Broken into two main categories of Hand Film and Machine Film depending on how the product is applied the rest of the variations are focused on gauge, manufacturing and application.

01. Hand Stretch Film

02. Machine Stretch Film

  • Cast Stretch Film
  • Blown Stretch Film
  • Converted Films
  • Specialty Stretch Film

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