A customer recently asked which tape sticks to a box better: paper water activated tape or plastic packing tape? The customer owns a farm to fork meat processing business that concentrates on eCommerce. They always struggle keeping their plastic packing tape held to their boxes due to cold contents inside and some moisture on the box. Since the plastic tape was not performing consistently, the customer was looking for an alternative.
Plastic tape doesn’t perform well in cold wet environments unless there is a special aggressive adhesive on the tape because plastic tape will tend to sit on top of a carton instead of adhering to the cardboard due to the moisture.
We recommend paper water activated tape for this application, considering the cold contents and a small amount of moisture. Paper tape, also known as water-activated tape (WAT), gummed tape, kraft paper tape, or reinforced tape is a great option. This tape comes in reinforced and non-reinforced options, where reinforced tape offers greater strength with plastic strands embedded in the tape.
Paper Water-Activated Tape Information
Water-activated tape provides a seal superior to plastic tape wherever tamper-evidence, strength, security, and professional image are a priority. It also tends to be more consistent than using plastic tape and can seal boxes in hot, cold, and dusty warehouse environments.
Water activated tape comes in different versions to accommodate different weight boxes. Our customer had many different SKUs where the weight of the boxes varied from 10 to 30 pounds, so we recommended the
H-10 water activated tape by Holland Manufacturing Company.
Don’t forget the Water Activated Tape Machine
You also must use a water activated tape machine which adds water to the tape adhesive (activating it) then the machine will cut the tape to the length that you want.
To go along with the H-10 water activated tape, we recommended the manual Betterpack 333 for low volume shipping requirements and the electronic version for higher volume applications including the Betterpack 500 and the Betterpack 555ESA that are faster and have many more automated capabilities.
For more information about water activated tape and water activated tape dispensers please fill out the form below.