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There are multiple factors to consider for improving packaging for your business. Protecting products is important, but businesses must also be mindful of costs and the impact of packaging on the environment. Bulk bags are an increasingly popular and sensible choice for several reasons.

Since bulk bags were invented, there has been a debate over the most cost-effective way of transporting semi-bulk products: in single trip or multi-trip bags? The answer seems clear—every time you use a multi-trip bulk bag, the costs reduce dramatically.

In the past it was common for granular raw materials to be supplied to site in large sacks. These sacks, weighing either 25kg or 50kg, were manually packed and stacked on a pallet. The recipient would then empty the sack in what was traditionally known as a ‘rip and tip’ operation. In the late 1980s this process was gradually replaced by people preferring to use semi-bulk packaging in the form of large versatile polypropylene bags, known today as bulk bags. This was the beginning of the decline of the use of the sack—whether made of paper, polythene or PP—in first world countries. So why did people prefer to switch to bulk bags?

Using Bulk Bags over other forms of bulk handling packaging offers many safety and economic benefits to companies.

It’s now six months since Bag Supplies became part of the Cliffe Packaging Group; where does time go? The Bag Supplies customer base has accepted and trusted the change of ownership and understands the strengths that both Cliffe can bring to Bags Supplies, and visa versa.

As part of our overall service to our customers, and as part of our QA procedures, we visit our suppliers on a regular basis to conduct audits. A good proportion of the bulk bags we supply come from long term partners in India. To make sure the supply relationships we have evolve we visit India on a regular basis. During theses visits we make sure that the companies we are working with are investing for the future.

Over the past ten years we have developed our export markets significantly. As a business we now export our bulk bags to over ten countries. Europe is a main area of growth for us but we also have customers in the Middle East, East Africa and North America.

In the Spring of 2012, we were asked to look at a project relating to the containerisation of bulk bags and maximising pay loads for deep sea exports. By slightly adjusting the size of the bulk bag the customer was able to add an extra 200kgs into each bag. It is true that we had to recertify the bag to hold a higher payload, but the costs of this were minimal as compared to the savings that could be made.