Flexible Packaging Marketing

The processing of any plastic into a film calls for the plastic to be melted, fed into a shaping exit die at a metered rate, cooled and fed to a wind-up station. Many variants and complexities can be added to this simple concept. The die can be flat or annular for either cast or tubular films. All flexible packaging, films, laminates, paper, foil, cartons, cases, bags,  pouches, labels, all start as material on a reel. Then the converters add value by printing, shaping, coating, metallic, laminating, stamping, slitting, forming, folding. 

A wide variety of plastics materials are used, plus the combinations of these films, as multi-layers by all the processes to obtain them, whether the final films are all plastics or a combination of plastics and other materials such as paper, cardboard and aluminium foil.

There are two types of PP(Polypropylene) films, oriented and cast. The global BOPP film demand is to grow an average 7% per annum, the demand in Asia accounting for more than half of this global growth. World consumption of BOPP has reached 6 million tons in 2015, of which China will be at least 1 million tons.

PET film is generally produced by the producers of resins and not by the plastics processing industry. From its origins in the forties, by Hoechst, it was one of the very first products to be very concentrated with world producers. The thin PET film continues to grow very actively in Asia, particularly India and Indonesia. The growth in packaging is slightly slower in the industrialized countries, yet kept up with a number of niches and specific applications such as metallic films for packaging.