Carton Sealing Tapes – Hot Melt or Acrylic?

A frequent tape question is “when should I recommend an acrylic adhesive carton sealing tape vs. a hot melt adhesive carton sealing tape?” If cost is “king” and if the tape is hand applied, utilize an acrylic. If the tape is going to be machine applied, start with a hot melt and examine the tape head tension and condtion of the rollers. If the end user is willing to adjust tape head unwind tension and allow cleaning of the rollers and blades, an acyrlic will perform well and create bottom line cost savings.

Hot melts, with the proper blend of resins and SIS, can have very high shear characteristics (holding power). The more SIS, the higher the shear. High shear hot melts are more expensive, relatively speaking, but they perform well in over-stuffed box applications and in situations where there the box flaps are under tension – wanting to push up and not stay flat (particularly with double wall vs. single wall boxes). Acrylics fail in these applications; they exhibit poor shear.

Acrylics have a wider temperature range than hot melts (32 degrees F to 150 degrees F). Hot melts (40 degrees F to 120 degrees F). In high humidity conditions such as food plants, they seem to perform better than hot melts. In low humidity conditions, they also seem to be more favorable. A high shear hot melt offers better quick tack than an acrylic. Both adhesive types appear to offer good fiber tear. For the most part, acrylics seem to take longer to completely wet out ( adhesive being absorbed into the surface of the substrate).

Both of these adhesives perform poorly on heavily printed surfaces, especially where a varnish or UV coating is applied over the print. Natural rubber adhesive carton sealing tapes and solvent acrylic carton sealing tapes should be tested for these applications. In dusty environments or heavily re-cycled corrugated sealing applications, natural rubber backed tapes perform very well. If a tape is going to be applied over a direct thermal bar code or ingredients label, use a hot melt…the acrylic adhesive will react with the print on a direct thermal label – distorting and fading the print on the direct thermal label (this does not happen on thermal transfer printed labels with the use of a ribbon).

Tapes: Fraud Protection, Traceability & Tamper Evidence

Cartons sealed with tape are susceptible to tampering. Tapes can be designed to help alleviate this growing problem. As packaging fraud, outright theft and “original brand” duping continues to flourish, the use of “tamper evident”, “security” and “traceability” tapes is on the rise.

Security Tapes are for the most part Polypropylene, PVC or Water Activated Reinforced Gummed  Tapes – printed with a warning message on the tape. The wording on the tape alerts the the receiving party to check the contents before issuing a clear receipt of the goods. Many times these are referred to as “stop” tapes or “caution/warning” tapes. The warning message can also include a “traceability” aspect by including the provider’s “logo” in the warning message.

Traceability tapes are by and large Polypropylene, PVC and Water Activated Reinforced Gummed Tapes that are custom printed with a company logo, name and address, and, in some cases, a custom design pattern that is difficult to duplicate.

Tamper Evident Tapes are generally specially constructed tapes that when cut, lifted or removed demonstrate evidence to the surface on which the tape was applied that tampering has, indeed, occurred. Some tapes leave a mark or an adhesive pattern on the surface indicating that an event has taken place.

There are times when labels are used in conjunction with these tapes to show tampering with the container. Some firms are applying a lable to the surface, first, before applying the tape – hence burying the label under the tape. Some apply apply the label post tape application on an edge at (90) degrees with an aggressive adhesive that creates “fiber pull” showing the surface has been penetrated and altered.

In the food processing industry, “traceability” tapes are becoming more important to “trace” ingredient product lots from specific raw material suppliers – in some cases – “quickly” by visual confirmation.

There is nothing that is 100% full proof due to the creativity of some “thieves” but the use of these tapes is certainly helping dissuade attempts. And, custom printed tapes with logo and brand names smartly printed on the tape surface surely helps market a name and product more effectively than just plain tape and plain boxes. When multiple size boxes are custom printed with individual brand names by the box supplier, especially when the same box is used for multiple “sku’s”,  it far more economical to custom print tapes for each ”sku” than it is to custom print boxes – let alone the space savings economics for storing many of the same size boxes in warehouses vs. the storage of simple rolls of tape.

For more information on the converting and printing of custom tapes and labels, refer to the following sites:

www.bgrinc.com and www.trianglelabel.com

Traditional Hand Pallet Wrap vs. Pre-stretched Hand Pallet Wrap

Manual hand stretch wrapping of pallets for securing shipments is simply a painful exercise. And it is exercise!

There are still many applications for hand stretch wrap where it is not efficient to bring the pallet to an automatic or semi-automatic stretch wrap machine. You must take the film to the pallet and wrap at the pallet location. These situations abound for in-plant transfer of pallets, grocery distribution load building, egg production and food manufacturing.

If you fall into this segment of hand pallet wrapping, you should be using pre-stretched hand wrap. It works and there are very few applications where it will not outperform traditional cast or blown hand pallet wrap.  Irrespective of all the technicalities in the film manufacturing, the end result is a film that is “tensilized” – very little elongation. The rolls are very light in weight. Film gauges fall in the .0003 to.0004 range. Film thickness does not seem to matter. Load retention is the key and there is comfortable load retention due to the stiff film properties.

Wrap a pallet and you fill find that it takes significantly less effort to wrap a pallet. Fatigue is significantly diminished. Yet, loads are contained appropriately. You do not need to “pull and stretch” – just “tug” the film as you approach corners. You literally walk around the pallet – with film forward or aft of your body position. It seems easier to walk with the film forward of your body. The film is “speedy”; you wrap quickly. There is no waste. Most of the films have a rolled or “cabled” edge that prevents fim breaks. This attribute increases productivity since there is virtually no edge nicking or damage that causes frustrating “restarts” with tradional hand pallet wrap. You can drop this film on the floor without roll damage. Rolls are utilized to their full extent – to the core. Since the film is already “pre-streched” to its ultimate yield, you use signficantly less film per load. Inherently, there is environmentally friendly “source reduction” in the amount of ounces used per load. Source reduction and cost savings coincide. On average, you will experience 20% savings. Yes, the price per pound is generally higher due to the thinner guage. All extruders of these types of film (as any thin gauge film) have a higher cost per pound due to the “pounds per hour” manufacturing equation associated with film extrusion.

Where to start? Try Paragon’s Torque III product or Sigma’s Ecowrap. They are both “hybrid” prestretch films that are in the “.0004″ range that allow a comfort zone when transitioning from regular hand wrap for the everday user. As these films are growing in use, the price per case and per roll is declining. With a film demonstration and simple training, the normal comment by those individuals assigned to pallet wrapping is simply – ” how long has this been out” and “why haven’t we been using this all along!” As the saying goes – applied to handwrapping of pallets – “this isn’t your father’s Oldsmobile”. Don’ t just exercise when wrapping a pallet. You can exercise efficiently and productively with pre-streth hand wrap.

For more information refer to www.bgrinc.com