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Wrapping film is a thin, highly elastic film that you wind around goods to hold them in place and shield them. Its main job is to turn a stack of separate items into one solid unit on a pallet. Once stretched, the film keeps trying to return to its original length, and that recovery force is what presses the load down onto the pallet, so nothing shifts, tips over or drops off along the way.
The wrap also seals the load off from moisture, dust and workshop dirt, and in an opaque grade it takes the contents out of sight as well. Few packaging materials prevent as much transport damage for as little money.
The raw material is linear low-density polyethylene, better known as LLDPE. It marries a very high elongation with solid puncture resistance: meet a sharp corner and the film yields rather than splitting straight through. Production is by multi-layer co-extrusion, and the outer layers are given cling. Cling is not glue — it is a characteristic of the polymer itself, which makes film surfaces that rest against one another knit together into a single closed skin. Standard film carries that cling on both faces; only the one-sided adhesive grade leaves the outside smooth.
All three names point to the same roll, and you will hear stretch wrap and pallet film used just as often. Keep it apart from shrink film, though: that material has to be heated before it draws tight, whereas wrapping film gets every bit of its holding power from being pulled. Where a load has to be sealed against the weather from every side, shrink pallet covers are the answer; for restraining the goods themselves, wrapping film remains the norm.
Rather than compare specifications page by page, use the table below to see at a glance where each grade belongs.
| Type | Thickness | Width | Length per roll | Stretch | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hand wrapping film | 7 – 35 my | 45 – 75 cm | 150 – 500 m | about 150% | Up to roughly 20 pallets a day |
| Machine wrapping film | 12 – 35 my | 50 – 75 cm | from 500 m | 150 – 400% | From roughly 20 pallets a day |
| Mini wrapping film | 17 – 23 my | 10 – 25 cm | 150 – 300 m | up to 150% | Bundling smaller goods |
| Coloured wrapping film | 12 – 23 my | 45 – 50 cm | 100 – 500 m | about 150% | Marking and screening loads |
| Vented and special stretch film | 20 – 23 my | 45 – 50 cm | 150 – 300 m | 150 – 300% | Goods that have to breathe |
| One-sided adhesive wrapping film | 12 – 17 my | 45 – 48 cm | 300 m | about 150% | Trolleys and pallets that touch |
| Sanstrap (stretch band) | 20 – 25 my | 5 – 12.5 cm | from 300 m | high | Holding loads together in-house |
For a Euro pallet the 50 cm roll is the reference width. Go narrower when the job is bundling, and wider when tall pallets need to be covered in fewer passes.
Thickness in my (microns) is what largely decides how much abuse a film absorbs before it gives way. Heavier goods and sharper outlines call for a heavier gauge. Broadly speaking: 7 to 12 my carries light, well-behaved loads, 17 to 20 my handles the everyday mixed pallet, 23 my suits dense and heavy stacks, and 35 my is there for machine components, building materials and anything with edges that bite. A detailed breakdown against pallet weights sits on our hand wrapping film page.
The workhorse of the category. You take the roll around the goods yourself, starting at the base and taking in the pallet, then working upwards. Our fastest-moving article is the 20 my roll of 50 cm by 300 m. Beyond that you will find extra tough 35 my film, 75 cm rolls for tall pallets, recycled grades and thin pre-stretched film starting at 7 my in the hand wrapping film range.
Once your volume passes roughly twenty pallets a day, the sums start to favour machine wrapping film. A wrapper draws the film out mechanically to 150, 250, 300 or even 400 per cent before it ever reaches the load, so one roll stretches across far more pallets and the film cost per pallet falls sharply.
Narrow rolls of 10, 12.5 and 25 cm in 17, 20 and 23 my. The rolls run to 150 m, while the 25 cm version holds 300 m. They are the tool of choice for coiling cable, holding tubes and profiles together or grouping stray cartons — all of it one-handed and without any tools. Transparent is joined by black, blue and red, and a dispenser is included with almost every roll of mini wrapping film.
Mass-pigmented LLDPE in 12, 20 and 23 my, on rolls of 45 and 50 cm running from 100 to 500 m. Black and white block the view of the load completely, while red, blue, green, yellow and orange earn their keep as signals: which carrier, which route, which pallet still needs checking. See the full picture under coloured wrapping film.
Perforations let air and warmth move straight through the wrap. That matters for vegetables, fruit, flowers and plants, and equally for anything coming out of a chiller that would otherwise sit sweating behind a solid layer of film. Have a look at vented and special stretch film.
Here the cling sits on the inner side only. While you wrap, the layers bond to each other perfectly well, yet the outside of the finished wrap stays smooth. That is why trolleys and pallets standing together do not stick to each other and the film is not torn when they are moved apart. The Danish trolley is the classic case, and a perforated version exists too — both under one-sided adhesive wrapping film.
Sanstrap is a narrow, extremely strong stretch band of 20 to 25 my, 5 to 12.5 cm wide and from 300 m per roll. Run it around a stacked pallet and the goods travel through your own site as one unit, without committing to a full wrap at that stage.
The right kit saves both film and effort. Among the foil dispensers you will find plastic caps for occasional use, bracket dispensers with a brake for film from 25 to 50 cm, a chrome-plated version on a heavy frame built for daily use, and a compact dispenser for mini rolls with a 38 mm core. Prefer to hand the job over altogether? Then move on to the pallet wrappers.
Sound wrapping comes down to sequence and tension far more than to the grade on the roll. The points below deliver the most in day-to-day practice:
Where the stack slides on its pallet, interleave anti-slip sheets between the layers. Very heavy consignments are best wrapped and then secured with PP strapping on top.
Consumption is governed by technique rather than by micron count. Three changes genuinely move the needle: switch to a thinner pre-stretched grade; fit a dispenser with a brake so the film is drawn out further before it lands on the load; and count how many turns the pallet actually needs — habit usually adds two more than the job requires.
Once the wrap comes off, it is polyethylene and belongs in the film or PE stream. Keep it dry and free of tape, and split transparent from coloured if your processor prefers it that way: a cleaner fraction earns a better rate.
Every roll listed here comes from stock and carries a quantity scale, so the price per roll drops as the order grows. Ordered on working days before 3:30 PM? Then your order will be shipped the same day. Enjoy free delivery on orders over €75 excl. VAT. If the width, colour or grade you have in mind is not shown, or you would like your own print on the film, simply tell us what you need.
Four to five circuits will see an average pallet safely away: two at the base to marry load and pallet, then up in a spiral and back down again. Heavy, tall or untidily stacked goods want one more layer, which is not the same as automatically reaching for a heavier gauge.
It tells you how much longer the film becomes as it is applied. At 150%, one metre off the roll ends up as two and a half metres on the pallet. By hand you will rarely exceed that figure, whereas a wrapper takes the film out to 400% and therefore puts far fewer kilos of plastic around each pallet.
Nine times out of ten the cause is a sharp corner or something protruding from the load rather than the film itself. Pad that point or move up a gauge. A damaged roll edge produces the same symptom, with tears reappearing at a constant height.
It rarely ends well. Hand rolls are shorter, they have not been pre-stretched and their cores are narrower than those a machine expects. Feed a pallet wrapper with machine wrapping film instead.
It deals with splashing water and road dirt, but not with rain falling steadily from above. The top of the pallet stays open unless you cover it with a top sheet or slide the whole load into a shrink cover.
It is: the material is PE film and goes into the film or PE fraction. Delivered clean and dry, it processes best. Coloured film yields a darker regranulate, which is why some processors ask for it to be collected on its own.
Two arguments, in fact: screening and signalling. Black and white put the contents entirely out of view, while the remaining colours tell anyone crossing the floor where a pallet is headed or what status it carries.
Certainly, provided the roll is narrow enough. Half a metre of width is unwieldy for bundling work, whereas mini wrapping film at 10 or 12.5 cm is worked with one hand and leaves nothing behind on the product.
Do you have questions about which size of wrapping film is best suited to your situation? Please don't hesitate to contact us — by phone on +31 184 – 614256, via info@kortpack.nl or via WhatsApp.