6 Rules of Thumb That Show You How To Effortlessly Lower Your Plastic Bag Cost

Unarguably, saving cost is a good to any business, no matter it is through any ways and at any part of your operation. However, it does not imply one should not care for the quality of the packaging material and shipping bag. If you use plastic bags to package or/and ship your product, you should have known it is very important that your bags can securely pack and protect the order from your warehouse to the hands of your buyers.

Instead, we advise that, being a business owner, one should try the best to ensure your order will arrive the delivery address safely, securely and without any harm or damage in order protect your brand and product's reputation and your client's privacy, confidentiality and interest. Therefore, you should evaluate what you are spending to ensure you are getting the best product possible packaging at the best price. So, after clarifying the right questions to ask oneself, we, as a plastic bag manufacturer since 1966, can help you by offering some advices to you in order to save you time and money.

If you are looking for ways to reduce your cost of your polyethylene bags (poly bag or generally called plastic bag), you can ask yourself and your manufacturer the following questions:

1. Sizing of Your Plastic Bag

Do ask that if you are using the proper size plastic bag - are my plastic bags made with the optimal size? The size of your bag will affect the total amount of raw material being used in order to produce the plastic bag in the product process. The raw material, ie, polyethylene, is the main cost of making your custom plastic bags. If you have your plastic bag made larger than your product needed, it is indeed a waste of raw material. This will then reflect in a higher per unit cost plus higher transportation fee and shipping fee (if you need to ship your order to customer).

There are some industry standards to what size you need and you are welcome to speak to our packaging specialist team whom are with more than 50+ years of experience and expertise.

2. Thickness of Your Plastic Bag

Raw materials like plastic resins have technically changed over the years and are indeed made much stronger now than they used to be before. That means, if you make your plastic bag with a certain thickness in mil or micron, you may now make them with thinner gauge but still retaining the same strength and tear-resistence. This alone may offer you the opportunity to at least slightly abate the thickness/gauge of your current plastic bag.

And by doing this, it can give you great cost reduction in a few ways:

- Thinner thickness mean using less raw material and hence, resulting the lower cost per plastic bag;

- Thinner bag also means you can put more bag into one corrugated paperboard box / carton box. This will get you cost saving in buying and using the box.

- Thinner bag will of course imply your order's total weight is less than before and thus, you will get your shipment fee lower for shipping the same quantity of bag.

An important thing to know as a plastic bag consumer is that there is a generally accepted industry standard for material thickness: +/-10%.

3. Case Count Maximization

We often find that customers are requesting their plastic bags be packed in case counts that are way less than the box can contain. In short, the more plastic bags you can put in a corrugated paperboard box, the greater the cost one can save. The more number of bags per box it can be placed within, the less number of corrugated paperboard boxes will be needed.

Firstly, you will be charged for less fee on the carton box. Secondly, it will save you cost on transit and shipment. Thirdly, you can save space for storage. This can be a great way to save your warehouse space and in-turn, which eventually can minimize your cost.

4. Printing Graphic Style

There are a few options out there in terms of simplifying your print graphics and style so you can decrease the cost of plastic bag. But first of all, you must understand and know that you are having the right type of print for your needs. This will ensure you are only paying for the minimum cost to suit your printing requirement.

A simple straightforward cost saving tip is to print your bag with only one side graphics and with less color, say, only in one color.

However, depending on your specific bag design, there can be many other ways for you to lower the printing cost without sacrificing the printing quality and your need. You are kindly asked to contact our packaging specialist at www.eplasticbag.com/contact for free design advice and consultation.

5. Ordering More Quantity By Planning Ahead

If you order a certain plastic bag on a regular basis, say, every 3 months, then applying a bulk order purchasing strategy to this particular plastic bag can save you money.

Try to discuss with your sales team and your supplier to evaluate the historical usage of a particular plastic bag along with your projected sales and usage for that same plastic bag. You may, with all the figure and projection, start to order for the plastic bag in a 6 months or annual basis. A larger order allows your supplier to manufacture your bags in larger quantity and thus, you may ask for a lower per unit price basing on larger ordering quantity. Also, ordering the plastic bag with less cycle and larger quantity imply that you can save further cost on shipment.

6. Ordering Plastic Bags with Less Different Sizes

If you are purchasing multiple sized plastic bags due to the various SKUs you are carrying, you may consider buying only less differently sized plastic bag. Instead of having XS, S, M, L, XL sized plastic bag ordered, you can have only S, M, L as long as your merchandise can fit into the bag or offering two bags if needed. This should drive cost lower out of your annual spending and is another option to be sure you can consider.

A Quick Sum Up and Key Take-aways!

If you are looking to decrease what you are currently paying for your poly bags, the above 6 points can serve as your basic and initial step to discuss with your own team and current supplier. Try to ask yourself, your team, your plastic bag manufacturer for methods of improving your packaging as well as lowering the cost and at the same time retaining the plastic bag's functionality and standard.

If you are looking for more information about how you can reduce the cost of your bags, or you want to upgrade your packaging and brand image, please reach out to our packaging specialist by visiting www.eplasticbag.com/contact or email us directly at sales@eplasticbag.com. Our staff will be happy to talk to you in more details.