Shrink-Wrapping Your Product: Is it Worth It?
For companies responsible for both the production and marketing of a product, protecting their inventory while in-transit can be troublesome. Pallets can topple, weather (on land and sea) can delay delivery times, and leaks or water damage can destroy a product entirely. While responsible employees and packing requirements can lessen the risk, there are few solutions as all encompassing as wrapping pallets in shrink-wrap— a highly flexible plastic material composed of linear low-density polyethylene. Read this article to learn about the benefits of shrink-wrapping your items.
Discourage Vandalism or Robbery
Depending on their location and the items inside, some warehouses are easy and lucrative targets for vandals or robbers. Since top-notch security systems or guards may be out of budget for smaller enterprises, shrink-wrapped pallets are an effective deterrent, as they require much longer to break and may not even be worth the criminals' time to cut through. Their low cost also makes them remarkably cheaper than other, equally as effective security measures.
Protects from Moisture
If transporting your products by sea or in high-humidity areas, unwrapped packages or cardboard boxes can easily be damaged by moisture. Warehouses with low ventilation or mildew problems are also ideal candidates for pallet wrapping techniques. As long as the pallet is wrapped in a dry facility, it will be water-resistant.
Pallet Stability
Although lorries or cargo ships might seem stable, windy roads or choppy seas can make it difficult for boxes to stay nicely stacked and balanced. Without the protection that shrink wrap offers, these could easily tumble and make unloading much more difficult than it needed to be. Forklift operators carrying these loads across warehouses will also benefit from the increased stability that shrink-wrapped loads offer.
Worker Protection
In addition to product damage, protecting factory workers should be of the utmost importance to any company. Unstable pallets or boxes can fall, hit, and severely injure nearby workers. By implementing pallet wrappers, these problems can easily be avoided.
Although plastic film may seem like a cheap, easy-to-break product, it comes in a surprising number of strengths and thicknesses. An increasing gauge system from 60 to 150 is used to categorize the best products for each type. The highest strength, 150, even claims puncture resistance and an ability to enclose loads of up to 1600 kilograms. Both hand rolls and machinery are available to apply shrink-wrap to pallets or boxes. When some pallets can carry hundreds of kilograms worth of profit, companies should take every precaution necessary to make sure those boxes reach their final destination unharmed.
For more information about implementing pallet wrappers in your business, contact a local supplier like W.A. Bag Closing Equipment.