STRETCH & SHRINK FILM | MATERIALS
Stable market: latest in stretch and shrink film
Pallet film plays a critical role in protecting goods in transit, but manufacturers and users must increase their efforts to improve its performance – and its recyclability
Delegates at the recent Stretch & Shrink Film conference, organised by AMI, discovered that recycling has become a key driver in the market – even though products are often ignored in sustain- ability calculations. Michael Mitchell, principal research and devel- opment engineer at packaging machinery com- pany Lantech, told delegates that pallet film is often ‘invisible’. “Brand owners don’t know how much stretch film they are using,” he said. He said that most plants track overall equipment
effectiveness (OEE), production count and down- time – but very few track energy or consumables like stretch film. This is because it is not seen by the – and only accounts for a small percentage of total plastic on the load. “Stretch film is a less than 1% problem,” he said. From a slide illustrating typical percentages of
different plastic packaging on a pallet of water bottles, he said bottles (PET) accounted for about 80%, caps (HDPE) around 9%, labels 6%, and shrink film (LDPE) 4% – but the LLDPE or PP stretch film is around 0.25%. Use of stretch film is not typically optimised because it is not part of the product or pallet
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specification, is less than 1% of the weight and is difficult to achieve. “Stretch wrappers are also on the end of the line and do not get much attention,” he added. Because stretch film use is not tracked, most
brand owners use much more than they need – which could be improved with optimisation. He urged users to update to new machinery – and track use with machine data. “Establish film weight targets for each pallet con-
figurations – and use the highest performance film you can get,” he said.
Recycling economy Mike Baxter, external affairs director at Berry Flexibles Europe, questioned whether a European circular economy for plastic films – including stretch and shrink – was truly achievable or just “hot air” from politicians and NGOs. He said the technology already exists to recycle
stretch/shrink film into the same product: a 20,000 tonnes/year recycling plant, including sorting, washing and recycling equipment, might cost upwards of €15 million, he said. “The cost of running an EU-based plastics film recycling business at scale means the recyclate
June 2025 | FILM & SHEET EXTRUSION 31
Main image: Pallet film is critical to
securing loads in transit
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