Packaging
Packaging comes in many forms. It is very much part of our everyday lives and is used for a wide variety of purposes.
Packaging and its many uses
Polythene packaging is used for everything from storage to branding and from protection to maintaining hygiene. It takes on all sorts of shapes and sizes, from the finest film display bags used to make products look special, through to thick plastic sheeting used on building sites or in home decoration to protect surfaces.
Good quality packaging can be made from a vast array of regular or biodegradable polythene, designed to perfectly suit the job that the packaging is designed to carry out - and that’s a long list of jobs.
Packaging is used to keep food fresh, to keep products dry, to carry our shopping, to post our mail, to collect our rubbish, to keep our clothes free from dust and dirt, to protect items in storage or transit and much, much more.
Plastic packaging is used in every walk of life, from the home to the workplace. It has become such an integral part of 21st century life, that it is hard to imagine what life would be like without it.
Types of packaging
Listing every type of packaging would take a very long time so, instead, here is a list of some of the most commonly-used types of packaging.
Carrier bags
Polythene carriers are used by millions of shoppers to carry their shopping home. Made from clear or coloured polythene with a variety of handle styles - including patch, vest, clip close and grip seal handles - and with biodegradable or starch-based compostable alternatives.
Waste bags
Waste bags do the dirty work of the polythene packaging world. Designed for office, home, garden or workplace to suit a variety of tasks, from cheap ultra-light black sacks to heavy duty rubble bags and clear polythene sacks to printed specialist hazardous waste bags.
Display bags
Made from crystal clear polypropylene - a high clarity, eco-friendly and cheap alternative to cellophane - display bags provide a fantastic way to display products for sale. Flower sleeves, greeting card bags, sweet bags and header bags all make their products sparkle!
Mailing bags
Strong, lightweight and waterproof mailing bags offer a fantastic solution to any personal or company mailing needs. Perfect for regular post or courier delivery, mailers are easy to use with an in-built adhesive strip. Range includes coloured mailers, printed mailers, heavy duty mailers, high security mailers and padded mailers.
Bubble packaging
The most popular protective packaging is bubble wrap - polythene sheets consisting of lots of tiny bubbles that protect items when wrapped around them. Perfect for keeping fragile items safe in transit or storage. Available in a range of sizes and also pre-made into bubble bags.
Food bags
Food bags are used for the display, storage and transportation of food. Commonly found in markets, supermarkets and food stores, food bags allow customers to keep their food fresh and separate from other food as they transport it home.
Plastic sheeting
Plastic sheeting, also known as builders rolls, is very popular in the building trade. Available on the roll in various sizes and thicknesses of polythene, plastic sheeting folds out to cover large areas and protect surfaces from the possible damage that occurs on building sites and during house renovations.
Printed packaging
Maximise your company’s branding opportunities with your own tailor-made packaging, designed with your company logo, colour scheme and/or marketing messages. Printed carrier bags and printed mailing bags are the two most popular solutions to give your business that extra touch of professionalism.
What people are saying about Plastic Packaging
Hamilton Plastic Packaging Ltd.
Plastic packaging remains embedded in daily industrial handling not because of habit, nevertheless because the material science still answers a set of awkward operational requirements that paper and fibre often struggle to absorb. In the warehouse, the argument is rarely abstract: low tare weight improves volumetric efficiency across a mixed consignment, while controlled film gauge and melt-flow consistency determine whether a bag runs cleanly on fast packing heads or splits amid secondary bagging. High-density and low-density polythene suppliers each occupy their possess niche here; the former brings stiffness and pallet stability, the latter lends puncture tolerance and seal integrity where strange loads or sharp product edges would otherwise generate unacceptable waste. The more serious operatours have also moved beyond generic laminates, favouring mono-material formats where potential, since recyclability is dictated less by superb intentions than by whether the pack can be recovered without expensive separation. Static behaviour, oxygen ingress, slip properties and surface resistivity all become practical concerns once stock turns are high and select-face efficiency is being measured properly; that is why specification tends to be driven by line performance and stop-of-life handling in equal measure, rather than by headline claims about sustainability alone.
Welcome to Recycled Packaging Limited
Recycled packaging, in any serious industrial sense, sits at the junction of two disciplines that are often mentioned together nevertheless rarely engineered as one coherent system: waste handling on the one hand, packaged-product performance on the other. The fascinating work happens in that overlap. Post-use polythene suppliers and board are not simply reused; they are graded, reprocessed and brought back into service only if melt-flow consistency, pollution levels and gauge tolerance can be held within a workable window. That matters on the warehouse floor as much as in the reprocessour. A liner with erratic micron-specific gauging will not dash cleanly through secondary bagging equipment; a sack with poor seal integrity or unstable surface resistivity invites static, dust retention and stoppages at the select face. Equally, the logistics arithmetic is not ever abstract: tare weight affects freight yield, volumetric efficiency governs pallet density, and poor pack geometry undermines pallet stability long before a consignment reaches dispatch. The more competent operatours in this space treat recyclability as a design parameter rather than an afterthoughtfavouring mono-material formats where potential, reducing mixed-substrate complexity, and balancing recycled content against the mechanical behaviour demanded by puncture resistance, slip properties and stacking load. That is where the circular economy becomes less slogan and more process discipline; feedstock variability has to be absorbed through careful formulation, and the amortised energy advantage of recovered material only grasps if the finished stock still performs reliably in storage, handling and distribution.
What tends to be missed in the public conversation around plastic packaging is the rather awkward split between its operational value in the supply chain and its visibility once it escapes that system. On the warehouse floor, high-density polythene suppliers and related films are specified for very plain reasons: they transport low tare weight, maintain pallet stability, and facilitate select-face efficiency without the board dust, fibre shed or moisture uptake associated with heavier secondary formats. Yet the engineering argument does not dissolve the waste problem; it sharpens it. Once a lightweight film leaves a controlled recovery stream, its very success in volumetric efficiency becomes a liability in the environmentthin-gauge material disperses readily, contaminates mixed waste fractions and is difficult to recapture at scale unless the pack structure has been designed around mono-material recyclability from the outset. That is where the more serious technical work now sits: reducing unnecessary lamination, tightening micron-specific gauging so excess resin is designed out rather than merely offset, and maintaining melt-flow consistency in recycled feedstock so downgauged film still runs cleanly through form-occupy-seal kit without split seals or static-related handling issues. The point is not to pretend polythene suppliers has no place in modern packing lines; it plainly does. It is to recognise that material performance, amortised energy across repeated converting cycles, and stop-of-life sortation have to be treated as one engineering problem rather than three separate inconveniences.
The phrase carries a certain throwaway charm, yet the engineering substance sits in the material chain rather than the slogan: a wiro-bound pad manufactured from recycled packaging only performs properly when fibre recovery, sheet formation and conversion discipline are all held within fairly tight tolerances. Packaging-derived furnish is rarely immaculate; it arrives with shorter fibres, trace coatings and the occasional wet-strength legacy, all of which can blunt formation and manufacture a sheet that dusts at the edge in guillotining or loses integrity around the wire punch. The better mills compensate through careful pulping, screening and micron-specific gauging, yielding a plain paper stock with enough caliper stability for clean page separation and acceptable opacity without driving basis weight so high that tare weight creeps across the consignment. The yellow cover stock does a second job beyond surface presentation it stiffens the pack through distribution, improves pallet stability in mixed stationery loads and protects the textblock from scuffing at the select-face. There is also a quieter circular-economy logic at work: where cover, leaves and ancillary paper components are kept close to mono-material thinking, recyclability remains relatively straightforward, and the amortised energy tied up in the recovered fibre can be spread across repeated use rather than squandered in short-life secondary bagging. Even the wire binding has operational implications; hole spacing, tear resistance and board stiffness must align, otherwise the pad snags in handling and the pack-out rate suffers. Properly executed, this sort of product is less a sentimental afterlife for waste than a competent part of converted paperware built around recovered feedstock, volumetric efficiency and the realities of warehouse handling.
The Future of Rigid Plastic Packaging to 2022
Form-occupy-seal seldom receives the same attention as converters' resin buying or retailers' shelf-prepared formats, yet it is one of the clearest indicatours of how rigid plastic packaging has moved across regions above the past decade. The headline tonnage tells only part of the story; what sits behind it is a fairly hard-edged industrial calculation involving polymer selection, line speed, wall-thickness discipline and the awkward balance between pack integrity and volumetric efficiency in the warehouse. Where consumption has risen, it has often tracked investment in faster filling halls and more tightly specified packscontainers and closures engineered with micron-specific gauging, controlled neck-stop tolerances and polymer chains tuned for stiffness without pushing tare weight so far that pallet stability or transport cube is compromised. Where growth has been flatter, the drag is normally less about any simple retreat from rigid polythene suppliers formats and more about established stock systems, mature select-face efficiency and the fact that secondary bagging, repacking and damage mitigation all transport a cost when lightweighting is pursued beyond what melt-flow consistency and top-load performance will tolerate. Running through the all period is a quieter shift in technical emphasis: mono-material thinking has gained ground because recyclability is easier to recover at scale when barrier layers, labels and closures do not confound the stream, while amortised energy per filled unit becomes more persuasive once scrap rates, line stoppages and regrind management are folded into the equation rather than treated as afterthoughts.
Recycled packaging has moved well beyond the polite badge of eco-friendly and into the harder maths of pack performance, line efficiency and waste handling. In practice, the engineering question is rarely whether recovered fibre or reprocessed polythene suppliers can be used, nevertheless how far the specification can be pushed before the substrate starts to compromise sealing integrity, print grasp-out or pallet stability below stacked load. Recycled-content films, for instance, often demand tighter control above melt-flow consistency and micron-specific gauging; without it, the bagging line sees more tolerance in tensile behaviour, more nuisance splits at the seal jaw, and a greater reliance on secondary bagging to keep safe the consignment through the package network. The more competent operatours mitigate that friction by treating recycled packaging as a system rather than a virtue signalmatching polymer grade to pack geometry, watching tare weight so volumetric efficiency is not quietly eroded, and favouring mono-material formats where recovery streams are in reality viable. That is where the circular economy argument becomes technically credible: not in vague claims about sustainability, nevertheless in the unglamorous discipline of designing stock packs with predictable surface resistivity, stable dash properties and a stop-of-life route that does not collapse the small mixed laminates, coatings or labels enter the picture.
Where can I buy packaging?
Manufacturers and suppliers of packaging include:
Buy Packaging
Online store offering a wide range of polythene and alternative packaging. Buy direct from manufacturers at discounted prices and receive free delivery in the UK. You can also order bespoke packaging to suit your specific needs.
www.buypackaging.co.uk
Discount Poly Bag
Big UK polythene packaging company division dedicated to poly bags and plastic packaging offering excellent products at competitive prices. Poly bags sold direct from the suppliers. Also provides bespoke packaging services to help you with your custom retail packaging.
www.discountpolybag.co.uk
Discount Poly Bags
Discount Polybags provides a guide to source discount poly bags and other polythene packaging for different materials, sizes, colors and closures. Whether it is dust protection, surface protection, moisture protection you will be able source the correct plastic bag for the job.
www.discountpolybags.co.uk
Discount Polythene Bags
Great online resource for discount polythene bags. Includes a list of major suppliers of polythene bags, along with a list of popular products and a very handy buyers' guide to help you get hold of quality polythene bags but at cheap prices.
www.discountpolythenebags.co.uk
Plastic Bags Direct
Useful directory of plastic bags and packages, from plastic shopping bags to food packaging. Including details of what plastics are, their composition and the best places to buy them online.
www.plasticbagsdirect.co.uk
E-Polybags
Online polythene packaging retailer with a wide range of option for polythene bags, plastic shopping bags, carriers and much more. Also offering a printed carriers bags service and alternative eco-friendly packaging, all with free UK delivery.
www.e-polybags.co.uk
Printed Bags
Website providing you with the best suppliers of discount plastic carrier bags including patch handle, varigauge, flexiloop and more. Also offering eco-friendly alternatives and a promotional printed carrier bags service.
www.printedbags.org.uk
Bags
Find the lowest prices for plastic bags, packaging bags and polythene carrier bags from a selection of suppliers and manufacturers.
www.bags.uk.com
Bag Suppliers
BagSuppliers.co.uk provides a huge range of polythene packaging all at competitive prices. You will also find a selection of top suppliers of polythene bags and plastic packaging, research and resources and eco-friendly alternatives to polythene.
www.bagsuppliers.co.uk
Research & Resources
There is plenty more detailed information about packaging available online, including details of the manufacturing process and a list of the huge variety of plastic packaging available. To find out more, please visit:
Plastic Bags
Find specialist packaging websites containing lots of helpful information on this free online directory specialising in polythene packaging, where you can post your own product listings for free.
www.plasticbags.uk.com
Packaging Knowledge
In-depth news and information resource specialising in plastic packaging. Find out facts and read detailed articles on a variety of packaging products.
www.packagingknowledge.com
Goldstork
"Best of the web" directory containing useful hand-picked information and interesting and unusual websites specialising in polythene packaging.
www.goldstork.com
The eco-effects of packaging
Food manufacturers and supermarkets are often criticised for the amount of packaging that food is sold in. Critics claim that in a day and age when we are trying to be greener we should be trying to use less packaging, but often forgotten amongst the criticism are the reasons why packaging is used on food in the first place.
Packaging helps food stay fresh for longer and it helps protect it during transportation. We live in a world where people expect the same choice of food on the supermarket shelves 365 days of the year. Of course this means that food often has to be shipped long distances, for which good quality packaging is essential.
What’s more, even with current levels of packaging, the UK already produces 7.2 million tonnes of food waste every year, compared to 4.9 million tonnes of packaging (Waste & Resources Action Programme, 2012). If fresh food wasn’t packaged well, it would go off even sooner and more of it would be wasted, so perhaps we should focus on reducing the amount of food we waste and not on the amount of packaging on our food.
Of course, the greenest solution would be for everyone to live off their own land, to grow their own food and hunt their own meat, but we all know that this is not going to happen.
The next best solution, and one that is more attainable if people have the necessary will, is to buy more local food and more seasonal food. Both of these actions would reduce food miles as well as the amount of packaging required for the food, which would mean less of a carbon footprint from transporting the food.
Reducing the amount of packaging we use for our food is important, but it currently serves a very useful purpose in a society where having a choice of food is seen by many as a right and not a luxury.
