Choosing the best heavy-duty packaging tape for your needs can be challenging because mistakes are costly.
Although a package may leave your facilities in good condition, your products can be damaged, or pilfered, on their journey. Your best choice of tape will protect your packages and ensure that they reach your customers in the same condition they left.
So, how do you choose the best heavy-duty packing tape?
How to choose the best heavy duty packing tape: what should you consider?
Start with tensile strength.
A reliable heavy-duty packing tape has good tensile strength—more than your packages require. When exploring options, check whether a tape’s packaging weight is mentioned; you need your tape to be able to handle the weight of your packages.
Basically, tensile strength is the resistance a tape offers before it snaps or tears. A tape’s tensile strength depends primarily on a tape’s thickness: heavy-duty packing tapes are stronger because they’re thicker than standard packaging tapes and use premium materials.
Before making a choice, check:
- The tape’s backing, whether it’s paper or plastic-based. If you need a super heavy duty packing tape, check whether the tape’s backing is reinforced with filaments to strengthen it.
- The tape’s adhesive: does it offer the best adhesion for your applications? Will the tape peel off in heat or cold?
Before we consider other factors—what about a tape’s colour?
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Colours when choosing heavy duty packaging tape: brown or clear?
When choosing the best heavy-duty packaging tape for your applications, you may wonder whether the best tape comes down to colour: is it best to choose brown tape, or a clear tape?
In general, a tape’s colour won’t affect its strength.
If you want your packages’ labels to be read easily underneath the tape, choose a clear tape. On the other hand, if you want to secure packages to camouflage or hide valuable contents, you can do this with a brown tape—paste the address and other labels onto the tape.
Next, consider how your tape will be applied. Do you need hand packaging tape, or machine packaging tape? (Tapes with similar backings and adhesives are available for both types of application.)
For low-volume operations, choose a hand packaging tape
Hand-packaging (manual) tapes are manufactured to be applied off the roll by hand, or via a tape dispenser. They’re meant for low-volume packaging, so the rolls are small—up to 150M of tape per roll.
Choose an appropriate width of tape to suit your packaging.
Check the size of the dispenser too, to ensure that the core of your chosen rolls will fit onto it. Rolls of tape are manufactured with cores of varying sizes.
High volume packaging? Choose a machine packaging tape
Machine packaging tape is manufactured on rolls of around 1000M or longer for semi-automatic, or automatic packaging machines.
Now let’s get down to the essentials: your heavy-duty packaging tape’s backing and adhesive.
Important: tapes are available in several grades, as well as choices of backing and adhesive. A premium tape offers higher quality than a standard tape and will be more expensive.
What backing should you choose for your heavy-duty packaging tape?
When choosing your tape, check the weight and the size of your packages and the tensile strength of the tape.
Heavy-duty packaging tapes are manufactured with various kinds of materials, including paper (often reinforced with plastic or string filaments), cloth, vinyl, and polypropylene.
The backings offer adhesives of several types.
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Consider the best adhesive for your environment
When you’re looking at the best adhesives for heavy-duty packaging tapes, consider the environments your packages will need to withstand.
An acrylic adhesive is super-sticky, durable, and ultraviolet (UV) light-resistant. It isn’t affected by changes in temperature. If you’re hand-taping packages with this kind of adhesive, you’ll notice that it’s challenging because the tape easily sticks to itself.
Tapes with a rubber adhesive are strong. However, they offer less UV-light resistance over time than an acrylic adhesive.
If you’re looking for an ultra-secure adhesive for your heavy-duty packaging tapes, which is unaffected by changes in temperature, look for tapes with water-activated adhesives. These tapes are very strong and resist removal. Any attempts at removal leave clear evidence of tampering. However, these types require special dispensers.
For extreme environments, special high-performance heavy-duty packaging tapes for cold rooms and sub-zero temperatures are available. These heavy-duty clear tapes offer high tensile strength. They’re usually manufactured with a polypropylene backing and a rubber adhesive.
The best heavy-duty packaging tape for your applications
To summarize: when choosing the best heavy-duty packaging tapes, consider your packages—their weight and size. Then choose a tape that offers security for your packages with a suitable tensile strength.
