What Are Packaging Materials and How Do You Choose the Right Type?

Updated

Packaging material is the consumable that actually touches and contains your product — heat shrink film, shrink labels, laminated flexible film, or tamper bands — as opposed to the machine that applies it. Choosing the right type means matching four things at once: your product's shape and weight, the protection or appearance it needs, the packaging process you run, and any sustainability or compliance target you have to hit. If any one of those is mismatched, the film will tear, seal poorly, look wrong on shelf, or fail to run on your existing equipment.

Material types and what each is used for

Benison's product catalog groups packaging material into several families, each suited to different jobs:

Material family Typical forms Common use
Heat shrink film POF, PVC, PET, BOPP, PP, PE Wrapping and bundling products; full-body or sleeve shrink
Shrink label film PVC, PET, OPS, straight shrink film Label sleeving on bottles, canisters, and containers
Laminated flexible film Flexible laminated packaging film Pouches and packs needing barrier or print quality
Eco/recyclable options Sustainable, circular, eco-friendly recyclable material Applications with sustainability requirements

The distinction matters because "shrink film" and "shrink label" are not interchangeable. Film wraps or bundles a product; label film is printed and sleeved onto a container as the label itself. POF, PVC, PET, BOPP, PP, and PE behave differently in shrink force, clarity, and sealing, so the same product may need a different film depending on whether it goes through a sleeve tunnel, a heat tunnel, or a flow wrapper.

Matching material to product and process

The most reliable way to shortlist a material is to start from the product category, because that already implies protection, appearance, and regulatory needs. Benison's published application examples show how this mapping works in practice:

  • Food & beverage — tamper-evident mayonnaise jar shrink wrapping, functional food flow wrapping, canned food, jelly products, biscuit shrink wrapping. These lean on seal integrity and, for jars, tamper evidence.
  • Medical & healthcare — cartoning for eye drops, flow wrapping for ear thermometer probe covers, medical mask shrink wrapping, blister banding. Here cleanliness and consistent sealing matter more than shelf appeal.
  • Beauty & chemicals — label sleeving for cotton bud canisters and twin-pack bottles, shrink wrapping for facial masks, spray cans, and cooling powders. Label film choice drives print and shelf appearance.
  • Hardware & others — shrink wrapping for door panels and socket covers, label sleeving for adhesive tape, sleeve wrapping for household products, bundled woven rope. These often need strength and load containment rather than barrier.

A useful rule: if the material is also the label, you are choosing a shrink label film; if it only holds or protects the product, you are choosing a shrink or laminated film.

Selection factors to check before you commit

Work through these in order, because each one can eliminate a material:

  1. Product shape and weight. Irregular or heavy items need higher shrink force or thicker film; light, regular items can use thinner, higher-clarity film.
  2. Barrier and clarity requirements. Does the product need moisture or oxygen protection, or is visibility the priority? Laminated film supports barrier needs; clear shrink film supports visibility.
  3. Shrink or seal performance. Confirm the film's shrink behavior matches your tunnel type (heat shrink, sleeve, steam, or air turbine) and that it seals at your machine's temperature and speed.
  4. Machine compatibility. Film width, thickness, and slip characteristics must suit the specific wrapper, sleeving machine, or tunnel you run. This is the most common cause of a material that "should work" but doesn't.
  5. Tamper-evident or multipack needs. Tamper bands and multipack bundling are separate material decisions from primary wrapping.
  6. Sustainability and compliance. If recyclable or eco-friendly material is required, confirm it is available in the film family your process needs rather than assuming every type has a green variant.

Where to verify specifics

Because film grades, thicknesses, and compatible machine pairings are product-specific, confirm them against the manufacturer's current material pages and application examples rather than general rules. Benison lists its material range, application cases by industry, and a downloadable resources section on its site, and offers a Subscribe Now page for updates. For a live project, the practical next step is to send your product type, process, and target outcome to the supplier so they can recommend a specific film rather than a category.