Printed packaging film is film carrying your design before it is converted into the format your line runs: rollstock for form-fill-seal machines, bags, sheets, liners or tape. We print up to 8 colours per side. The format you choose sets the thickness window you can work in, not the other way round.
That is the order a printed film specification should be written in: format, then thickness, then artwork. It is usually written the other way round, and the inversion is where the avoidable cost sits.
The format is decided by your filling line, not by the artwork
A printed film enquiry almost always arrives as a design and a thickness. The design is the part the buyer controls, so it gets settled first, and a gauge, the trade's word for film thickness, gets attached to it because a previous supplier quoted one.
Neither the design nor the gauge is the first decision. The first decision is what the film has to become: a roll feeding a form-fill-seal machine, a pre-made bag someone fills by hand, a sheet interleaved in a carton, a liner dropped into a drum. That choice is made by your filling line, and it governs the thickness you can run, the sealing layer, the structure underneath the ink and how the film is wound and delivered.
Get it in that order and one specification answers every supplier. Get it backwards and you re-approve artwork after the gauge changes. If you want the print side of the decision, our guide to flexo printing for packaging covers colour count, artwork and proofing. This guide is about the format the print lands on, and the flexible packaging capability table lists what we run on each.
The printed formats we run, and what each one is for
| Format | What it is | Thickness we run | How it ships | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FFS and auto-machine film | Rollstock feeding form-fill-seal and automatic packaging lines | 40µ - 150µ | Up to 8 colours flexographic | Rolls on cores |
| Laminated rollstock | Solventless laminate, printed, where barrier matters | 40µ - 150µ | Up to 8 colours flexographic | Rolls on cores |
| Liners | FIBC (jumbo bag), drum and box liners, heat sealable | 30µ - 200µ | Up to 8 colours flexographic | Bundled bags |
| Cheese and dairy packs | Food-grade PE as sheets, rolls or bags | 40µ - 70µ | Up to 8 colours flexographic | Sheets in cartons, rolls on cores |
| Courier bags | Co-extruded, permanent adhesive closure, standard sizes | 30µ - 200µ | Up to 8 colours flexographic | Bundled, in cartons |
| Warning tape | LDPE (low-density polyethylene), 50mm - 300mm wide, in five film colours | 30µ - 140µ | Up to 8 colours flexographic | Rolls |
The print ceiling is the same across all six formats: up to 8 colours per side, whether the film ends up as rollstock on a filling line, a liner inside a drum or a reel of warning tape. It holds on both printing processes, flexographic and rotogravure, the second of which prints from engraved cylinders rather than plates. Print capability is therefore not the variable you are choosing between here.
The thickness windows are the variable, and they are not preferences. They are what each format needs in order to work.
Thickness is a property of the format
Six formats, four thickness windows, for reasons that have nothing to do with print.
Liners and courier bags run the widest, 30 to 200 microns, because a liner is structural. It has to survive a bulk bag being filled, lifted and dropped, and at the thin end it has to fold into a drum without creasing into a leak path.
Cheese and dairy packs run the narrowest, 40 to 70 microns. Thin enough to form and seal on a dairy line running at speed, heavy enough to hold a wet product without pinholing.
FFS and laminated rollstock both sit at 40 to 150 microns. An FFS machine forms the pack from the roll as it fills, so the film has to be stiff enough to form and soft enough to seal. The top of that window is where a heavier pack or a longer drop needs the extra gauge.
Warning tape runs 30 to 140 microns at 50 to 300 millimetres wide, which is the one case where the width is the specification and the gauge follows it.
If a supplier quotes you a single gauge across formats without asking what the film becomes, they are quoting the film they have rather than the film your line needs.
What your machine needs, and what we will not publish
Three numbers decide whether printed rollstock will run on your machine, and we publish none of them, because they are set per job rather than per product line:
- Roll width and core size. Our packaging rollstock is made to the width your machine takes. Published widths on this site cover the agricultural lines, up to 16 metres on greenhouse and silage film and 0.6 to 3 metres on mulch. Packaging rollstock is cut to order.
- Repeat length. Set by the pack dimensions and the plate geometry, so it comes out of your artwork and your pack size together.
- Unwind direction and web layout. Which face the print is on, which way the roll unwinds into the machine, and where the registration marks sit. Your machine manual specifies this, and getting it wrong means a correct roll that will not run.
Send your filling line's make and model with the enquiry and these come back as part of the specification. Nobody can give them to you from a product page, us included, and a supplier who quotes rollstock without asking is quoting on the assumption that you will absorb the rework.
Where printing sits in the order of manufacture
Printed packaging film is the output of a sequence, and knowing the sequence tells you which questions have to be answered before which.
We extrude polyethylene film in house, from 15 to 200 microns. Printing comes next, rotogravure or flexographic, up to 8 colours per side on 6 and 8 colour machines. Lamination follows on a solventless line, bonding into any of seven structures. PE is polyethylene, BOPP is biaxially oriented polypropylene, PET is polyester, Al is aluminium foil and MTZ is a metallised layer, and they combine as PE/PE, BOPP/PE, BOPP/BOPP, BOPP/MTZ, PET/PE, BOPP/PET/PE and PET/Al/PE. Conversion is last, cutting and sealing the printed web into rolls, bags, sheets or liners.
The order matters because the ink is laid before the laminate closes over it. On a laminated structure the print is sandwiched inside, protected from the filling line and from the product, which is why a printed laminate survives abrasion that would scuff a surface-printed roll. It also means the structure has to be settled before the plates are made. Changing a laminate after printing is a reprint, not an adjustment. Our guide to laminated packaging film structures works through that choice, and the layer and micron specifications cover the mono and multilayer films underneath it.
Food contact: the question above format and price
If the printed film touches food, one question outranks format, gauge and price: does the supplier's certification scope cover the product you are ordering?
Inks, lamination adhesives and the film are all part of a food-contact declaration. We hold BRCGS for packaging materials, FSSC 22000 version 6, the Global Recycled Standard, ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 45001 and Halal certification, and every certificate is downloadable from our certificates page. Read the scope when you download it. A certificate names products and production lines rather than a whole factory.
Printed packaging film in 6th of October City, Egypt
Al-Qadisiyah Pack has produced polyethylene film in 6th of October City since 1998. We extrude from 15 to 200 microns, laminate seven structures on a solventless line, print rotogravure and flexographic up to 8 colours per side, and convert into FFS and auto-machine rollstock, laminated rollstock, FIBC and drum liners, cheese packs, courier bags and warning tape. Our film reaches food and beverage producers including Nestlé, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, listed on our clients page, and we export to Libya and Saudi Arabia.
Send the format, your filling line and the artwork through our contact page and you get a specification you can compare across suppliers rather than a price per metre that hides what it excludes.