Helpful Insights

Tape might seem like a small cost on your packing line, but when you’re sealing thousands of cartons every week, even a little waste can quickly add up. From excessive tape tails and unnecessary overlap to machine misfeeds and incorrect settings, small inefficiencies can quietly increase your packaging costs without anyone noticing.

A pallet can be tightly wrapped, securely strapped and ready for dispatch, yet still arrive with crushed corners, damaged cartons or an unstable load. The reason? Some of the most vulnerable points in any pallet are also the easiest to overlook: its edges and corners.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is already changing the way businesses account for packaging, from the data they collect to the fees they pay. While much of the conversation has focused on consumer-facing packaging, there’s another category that warehouses deal with every day: tertiary packaging and transit packaging.

For decades, bubble wrap has been the go-to choice for protecting products in transit. It’s familiar, readily available and effective at cushioning everything from fragile goods to awkwardly shaped items. But the way businesses think about protective packaging is changing.

Peak season has a way of exposing weaknesses in a packing operation that go unnoticed for most of the year. A taping machine that handles your usual April workload without a problem can become the point where the entire packing line starts to back up when order volumes surge in November and December.

Packaging is often one of the last things signed off before a pharmaceutical product reaches the market. Yet it can also be one of the reasons a product is pulled, rejected or delayed. A broken seal, incorrect label or failed tamper-evident feature can quickly become a much bigger problem than a pharmaceutical packaging issue.

When it comes to transporting goods, the packaging that keeps products secure on a pallet needs to do more than simply hold everything together. Tertiary packaging plays a crucial role in protecting palletised loads throughout their journey, but the demands placed on that packaging can vary significantly depending on how goods are transported.

Plastic strapping is a reliable and widely used solution for securing loads during storage and transport, helping keep products stable from the warehouse to their final destination. But while plastic strapping is designed to withstand the demands of everyday handling, its performance can be influenced by the environment around it.

Pharmaceutical packaging plays a critical role in protecting medicines from damage, contamination, and environmental factors throughout their shelf life. But there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The right packaging solution needs to be carefully matched to the drug format, formulation, and intended use to maintain product safety, stability, compliance, and usability.