How Can Gummed Tape Benefit My Business?

What is your company’s goal when shipping products? It is to make sure the products inside the corrugated cartons are delivered in perfect condition. If you are successful, your customers are satisfied and your company’s costs are reduced.

To keep your products protected, you’ll need a versatile sealing solution so your cartons can withstand the shipping process and your business can run cost-effectively. Sealing solution elements to consider include harsh handling treatment, theft, productivity, and branding. One sealing product, reinforced water-activated tape, also known as gummed tape, is uniquely suitable to stand up to the shipping challenge. This post highlights how gummed tape can benefit your business.

Products Are Safer

As your carton travels to its destination, it is handled many times. Fortunately, reinforced water-activated tape is extremely strong and can withstand the rigors of what can be a rough and tumble shipping process.

Cartons remain tightly sealed and products safe within. When gummed tape is applied to the carton, it literally “Welds” to the corrugate and it’s crossing, reinforced fibers provides a tamper-evident seal. The tape is very difficult to remove without leaving signs of incursion. Thus, your cartons are protected from theft. This adds to the customer experience while ensuring satisfied customers and avoid the added costs of having to replace missing products.

Productivity Is Increased

To use water-activated tape, you’ll need a water-activated tape dispenser. These dispensers are available as manual machines, which do not require electricity and as electric tape dispensers, which do require power.

They are very simple to use; they wet and cut the tape. Using them, in comparison to having packer use a hand-held tape gun with plastic, pressure sensitive tape, improves business productivity while reducing “repetitive action injuries” on your packing line. Studies have shown that using water-activated tape with the dispenser is 21% more productive than using a hand-held tape gun. Click here for study results.

Brand Recognition Is Increased

Corporate and product branding is an important element for business growth. By using gummed paper tape, your company can simply print its logo or a message right on the tape in either color or black and white. This looks professional.

A logo printed on your tape keeps your brand front and center when your carton arrives at your customer’s home or office reminding them of their customer experience and giving your company another chance to delight that customer.

This enhances the first impression your company makes upon your customer. Using printed gummed paper tape sets a positive stage for delighting your customers as they open the corrugated carton and receive your products.

Central Brand Gummed Tape | Water-Activated Tape

IPG offers a full line of water-activated tape, designed to create a superior seal on your corrugated cartons while providing advantages other carton sealing methods do not.

Central brand water-activated tape is offered in a wide range of paper and reinforced gummed tape styles, roll lengths and widths to best fit your carton sealing needs. It is the preferred choice of packaging specialists when quality, strength, security and professional appearance are critical.

Want to see if gummed tape will benefit your business? Receive a free water-activated tape sample >

E-Commerce Packaging Tape Usage

By Ryan Mach, IPG Product Manager, Water-Activated Tape ––  

14 inches. This is an important number in e-commerce packaging today. It is the average length of a carton used in e-commerce in North America. The actual number is 14.3 inches (Standard Deviation=6.6).

True, there are organizations that ship nothing but long golf clubs or fishing rods, but you know who you are and you know what size cartons you use. For the rest of us, the answer is neither constant nor clear. Even if you have calculated the average length of your cartons, how do you compare to the industry?

Carton length drives a large number of decisions: corrugate choice, tape consumption, packaging station design, shipping cost, rack sizing, conveyor sizing, label size, etc. Logistics engineers have hundreds of decisions to make in this rapidly growing industry.

How Much Tape Per Carton Is Normal?

14.3 inch tape plus three inch tails (on each side) equals ~20 inch tape for the closure of the top or bottom of a carton. Operators applying pressure-sensitive tape by hand often use two or three strips of tape per top or bottom. Using water-activated tape (gummed tape, Kraft paper tape), you can be sure of single-strip closure. In addition to its efficiency, WAT lends itself well to custom printing/branding, and is considered the most secure way to seal a carton with its tamper-evident seal.

Watch this video comparing pressure-sensitive tape with water-activated tape:



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