Stretch wrapping’s come a long way in the thirty-eight years since we invented it. Although it’s been characterized by a wide range of innovations, the evolution of the entire industry was actually determined by just two ideas.

The first was stretch wrapping* itself or the idea of using stretch film to make a unitized package. It changed the way we load trucks and railcars forever.

Today, stretch wrapping has become the standard way of preparing products for shipment. All over the world, fork truck drivers move stretch wrapped pallets on and off trucks and railcars in minutes instead of the hours or days that it took to floor load. The productivity gain has been enormous.

The second idea was prestretch*.  Prestretch multiplies the efficiency of stretch film. It turns one foot of film into three feet, tripling the yield of a stretch film roll, so its economic impact has been massive. As a result, prestretch has become a standard feature on almost all stretch wrappers.

Now we have a third idea that’s as big as stretch wrapping and prestretch. And the early signs are that it’s going to affect the course of the industry just as they did. This idea is metered film delivery*.

Metered film delivery is a new way to dispense stretch film as it’s applied to the load during the wrapping process. It overcomes a host of technical problems that plague conventional stretch wrapping technology.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of metered film delivery. One of its major benefits is that it excels at delivering and managing containment force**, the most important factor in shipping a load successfully. The new metered film delivery stretch wrappers are also exceptionally able to cope with today’s explosion of harder-to-wrap loads.

Like its stretch wrapping and prestretch forerunners, metered film delivery is on the way to becoming a stretch wrapping standard. It’s following the same pattern of solving big problems and generating huge productivity gains. It’s delivering kind of performance gain that will, once again, forever change the course of the stretch wrapping industry.

*Stretch wrapping, prestretch, and metered film delivery are Lantech inventions and recognized by patents from the United States and other countries. Lantech holds over 170 stretch wrapping patents.

Other notable Lantech patents that heavily influenced the stretch wrapping industry are for the first automatic stretch wrapper, simple automation, and the Pallet Grip® universal load to pallet bond.

**Containment force is the pressure applied to the load by the layers of stretch film.

Learn more about metered film delivery, other Lantech stretch wrapping innovations, and containment force at www.lantech.com