Packaging and Stylish Bags

Flexible bulk containers provide promising new markets

The commodity crunch

Nicknamed bulk bags, these large fabric containers usually have forklift straps at the top and discharge chutes at the bottom, with the vast majority identical cube-shaped containers made of welded polypropylene. The basic bags have plummeted to a quarter of their 1980s price, and margins are slim.

But many bulk bag makers have turned their attention toward new markets and are manufacturing specialty or custom bags at their customers’ behest. There may be less shipping overall, but these companies are trying to make sure that more shipping is done in fabric containers. Simons agrees. Silos defeat the purpose of FIBCs, she points out. When bulk bags are empty, they can be stacked flat, taking up almost no space in the warehouse.

Indeed, FIBC makers are doing all they can to supplant metal containers. AmeriGlobe has introduced freestanding drum bags that can be lifted by the straps like FIBCs, but can be filled using drum-filling equipment. It has introduced a pallet-free bag that can be forklifted from the bottom via a set of rigid polypropylene channels. The all-in-one design saves labor and space, since the bags can be stacked without loading them onto pallets.

fibc bag

Risk reduction

To make warehouses safer, FIBC makers have created special bags that are designed to dissipate static electricity. “A material such as titanium dioxide has got to have a bag that will discharge the static,” Griffith says. Many compounds are caustic, corrosive or reactive, and have to be kept in specially lined bags. Some bulk bags are lined for a different reason: to provide the cleanest environment possible for the goods inside. That’s the case with B.A.G.’s Pharma Bags, which are small (3-40 cubic feet), lined and baffled bags intended for pharmaceutical ingredients.

During one on-site visit, AmeriGlobe staffers found that seed companies filled some of their bags only part way. They wanted to buy and sell seeds by seed count, not volume, but because the seed sizes were inconsistent, the product didn’t always fit the bags. Unfortunately, incompletely filled bulk bags have a tendency to slump, causing dangerous stacking and transport problems.

We can handle the whole range of possible seed counts in two bag sizes instead of four, so our customers don’t have to invest as much in bag inventory.”

Better bags, bigger markets

The margins for commodity-type FIBCs are continuing to shrink. The key to creating growth under these circumstances, Simons has found, is to introduce the bulk bags into new markets that have not previously used them. Slowly, over the past five years, they are becoming accepted in the U.S. The advantage is that they can bring gravel or any type of building material to the site and stage it before it’s needed, as opposed to bringing it in with a dump truck, and a lot of times, they’ll reuse the bags.

By: Jamie Swedberg

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