Plastic bags come in various shapes, sizes, and strengths. That is why it is one of the most flexible, versatile, cost-effective packaging solutions on the market. When it comes to how poly bag thickness is measured and how to know what thickness and strength is right for their products, a lot of our clients who have not bought the items earlier find it unfamiliar to use the unit of Mil or Micron. In this post, let together figure out these definitions.
Understanding Poly Bag Thickness
Poly bag ply relates to the strength, durability, and protective capability of the bag. Based on what you want to carry, you may need a thicker or thinner bag to hold your product. This depends on a poly bag’s mil score.
A mil is a popular measurement unit in the industry for plastic bag thickness, or gauge.
1 mil is equal to a thousandth of an inch (or 1000 mil = 1 inch). To make you more easily to imagine, most poly bags are 2-3mil. But it depends on which type of bags and the bag size as well. For example, shopping bags and garbage bags need to be thicker than bread bags which are just around 1 mil. Compared to normal measurement units, the range seems small, but for plastic bags, there’s a big difference between 0.5 or 1 mil poly bag and a 5 mil poly bag on both bag quality and price.
What is often used in Hanpak?
Actually, we work with clients all over the world, so we are familiar to the common measure unit for pe bag thickness. The most used ones we see are Mil and Micron (mic), 1 Mil = 25.4 Microns or 1mm = 1000mic.
Common Poly Bag Mil Types
To help you understand the difference between common poly bag thicknesses, here are some of the different uses for plastic bags at varying mil sizes.
How to Choose Poly Bag Thickness
It is easy for the clients who know and buy poly bag products previously as they know how thick should be suitable to their need. However, for new clients, we often as them 3 questions to advise them an appropriate bag thickness.
What is the Product? : What are you putting in the plastic bag? How weigh it is and its dimensions. When it comes to heavier items, it requires thicker mil poly bags than light items. And normally, the bag thickness comes along with bag size.
How the Level of Protection is? : Does your product have fragile or sharp edges and need extra protection? Delicate items should require a thicker poly bag for better protection from damage like scratching. Thicker poly bags can also protect other items from your product — if your item has sharp edges, for example.
How is Plastic Bag Durability Important to you? : How long does your poly bag need to last to make sure the shipment safe from a store to their storage? Whether your poly bag is single use or reusable will affect the mil score as well. Reusable bags should be at least 2 mil, while single-use poly bags can be less than 1 mil, around 20mic.
Plastic bags are an incredibly versatile packaging material that can be developed into varying strengths to serve any application. In Hanpak, we have many years of consulting and producing poly bags, so if you’re still not sure which poly bag thickness is right for you, talk to an expert from Hanpak. We’d love to learn more about your product and application and help you find the very best thickness and size poly bag for your company.
Also, kindly note that the minimum thickness that ensures the bag quality is bigger for LDPE than HDPE. It is 8 mic for HDPE and 20 mic for LDPE. Read more about different kinds of plastic here.
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