Shipping Supplies

Shipping plays an integral role in the supply chain world. A plethora of items ranging from products to trendy gifts, documents, and other things are shipped to customers’ doorsteps worldwide. Shipping heavy-duty packages and fragile items are also carried out daily. Various modes and options of shipping and supplies are also available for the convenience of customers.

To delve into the world of product packaging, you need to consider multiple factors that come into play and deeply understand them. The first factor is the choice of packaging materials and their types which you need to decide based on the product you are shipping. Materials include plastic, cardboard, metal, paperboard, shrink film, foil, boxes, bio-plastics, clamshells, and the like. 

Explore your options by researching appropriate packaging options to decide upon the best material suited to your packaging needs. In this article, you will learn in detail about the importance, types, and several other aspects of shipping supplies.

What are Shipping Supplies?

The shipping sector in the supply chain industry is busy 24/7 because they ship items out daily. Shipping supplies include parcels and packages, which are the containers used to carry items from one point to another, ensuring their safety. Multiple types of shipping supplies are used to transport packages to their designated destinations. 

Parcels are constantly subject to dropping, constant movement in vehicles, and rough handling. This is where protective packaging supplies come in. These supplies go within the boxes and are equally important to prevent damage to items within parcels. 

Damage to items can result in customer dissatisfaction, due to which companies might end up incurring a loss. Therefore, as a shipping service provider, you must use protective packaging materials such as packing peanuts, bubble bags, padded divider sets, packing paper, and packing foam. Each of these has different features that adhere to different packaging needs. Make sure that you research before settling for the ideal packaging material. 

Packaging supplies are inclusive of reusable or single-use materials important in packaging operations. A wide range of supplies falls under the umbrella of ‘packaging’. It is used to define all items relevant to packaging, starting from containers, wraps, boxes, sacks, cones, fillers, cores, bags, and pallets to items like labels, packing slips, invoices, plates, tags, and the like.

Why Should I Care About Shipping Supplies?

Companies are constantly looking for methods to come up with edgy marketing strategies to satisfy customers. Packaging can be a great marketing tool because it gives customers a good impression of the product and the brand. Be it online or store-bought, a product’s packaging is bound to have a lasting impact on the customer because it is what they notice at first. 

Packaging, therefore, has been given a significant amount of importance to provide customers with a pleasant ‘unboxing’ experience that they are more likely to share on social media. This modern and steadily rising trend has become an incredibly effective marketing tool. The following reasons are why you should consider investing in good shipping supplies:

• Protection: This is the primary motive of packaging. Parcels are often prone to damage due to the mishandling of products during the shipping, handling, and delivery processes. Strong and sturdy packaging ensures the product is safely delivered to the end user. Packaging also protects the product from external factors like humidity, heat, sunlight, and other harmful factors.

• Safety: Packaging is integral in keeping the contents inside safe for consumers during shipping. It should also have a label affixed with important shipping information to ensure it safely reaches the end user. HAZMATs, toxic substances, fragile items, or perishables are packaged with extra care and high-grade shipping supplies.
  
  All these factors add to the safety of the product encased inside the packaging during the shipping and handling process of the supply chain. Also, remember to add as much information as possible to avoid losing packages in transit and incurring a loss.

• Usability: Consumers have a high preference for all-purpose packaging. Functional and user-friendly packaging can sometimes appeal more than the actual product itself. Ensure that the packaging is functional, easy to open, and provides customers with a pleasant, unboxing experience.

At this stage, people are compassionate towards environment-friendly items, whether packaging or products. Therefore, a reusable or recyclable package is more likely to satisfy this population of consumers. 

• Sustainability: With the consumer base getting more and more sensitive toward environmental needs, companies have shifted towards providing shipping materials that have less carbon footprint and are reusable and recyclable at the same time.

Consumers are now more attentive to nature and conscious of the impacts their actions can potentially have on the environment. So, they tend to be more inclined to buy from companies if given environment-friendly shipping supplies or packaging.

Essential Shipping Supplies

Every retailer is involved with the safe delivery of products to the end customer. This plays a vital role in building brand trust and loyalty. However, as a shipping service provider or e-commerce platform, you must ensure that you do not go overboard while choosing shipping supplies. It can lead to additional shipping costs. You need to find the safest and most cost-effective option for delivering your goods intact to the end customers.

Corrugated shipping boxes

Corrugated boxes are the most widely used supplies for shipping and have been a go-to packaging item for years. The global packaging or shipping industry highly uses corrugated boxes. They come in a standard rectangular shape and usually arrive in flat folded stacks which require the handling team to assemble manually.

These boxes, made from corrugated cardboard, are used widely with case erectors and packaging machinery to turn flat cardboard into standard box shapes. The boxes are then used for packaging and shipping products.

Corrugated cardboard is manufactured using one or multiple types of fiberboard, which are created via fluted lamination or corrugation. Cardboard is usually made out of paper-pulp-based heavy-duty boarding material. Packaged items usually include electronics, pre-packaged consumer goods, and the like.

Bubble/Poly mailer envelopes

Bubble mailers are waterproof bags with a bubble lining that aims to provide mild protection to consumer goods. You can choose various colors and sizes and customize them with your branding or label. These are highly cost-effective and ideally used for packaging smaller items that don’t require additional protection, hard objects like books, flatware, candles, and the like.

Shipping tape

Shipping tapes are ideal for mailing packages prone to mishandling during shipment. They are the most commonly used supplies for shipping and come with an adhesive that helps keep the box sealed and its constituents safe. Manufacturers of shipping tape use a hot molten adhesive to make it durable. Shipping tape is designed to be thinner and lighter and should be used for lightweight boxes. Shipping tape can withstand the harsh processes involved in handling. However, it may not be suitable for long-term storage.

Numerous types of packing tape are only designed for cardboard boxes. You should consider investing in a tape gun for expediting and simplifying the operations if your company is primarily involved in freight and shipping and you handle a lot of cardboard daily.

Scotch tape

Scotch tape is a household name in the world of stationery supplies. These are pressure-sensitive tapes manufactured by 3M. This tape is known for its great adhesive power, and it can be used on any possible surface when you immediately bring it into contact. Its great holding power is due to its strong adhesive, preventing the tape from wearing off. 

Scotch packaging tapes can moderately withstand moisture for short periods. The Scotch tape company also manufactures shipping tape, widely used in the shipping industry for packaging boxes, wraps, and other shipping supplies.

Printer paper

E-commerce sellers print hundreds of shipping labels daily. Crucial shipping information printed on plain paper and glued on top of the packaged boxes are called labels. Online postage programs use inkjet or laser printers to print these labels in bulk.

Readily generated labels are attached to the package with regular packing tape or Scotch tape. Ensure that every piece of information, such as the delivery confirmation barcodes and addresses, is printed accurately. The best part of using regular paper to generate shipping labels is that these supplies are cheap and readily available. 

Ink

Printing ink is a mandate for generating shipping labels. It is essential in the handling process because it is used to print shipping information, instructions, barcodes, prices, and the like. 

Digital scale

Digital shipping scales are in-house items mandatory for every shipping industry or warehouse. Used by business persons and e-sellers worldwide, these scales might come in handy for checking the net weight of your packages before shipping them out. Using a digital scale will help prevent rejecting items to incorrect weight input. Digital scales are versatile and can measure parcels and mail in grams, kilos, ounces, and pounds.

Scissors

Scissors are shearing tools used manually to cut several items like cloth, plastic, cardboard, wraps, foils, etc. In the shipping industry, professionals widely use them to precisely cut labels, tapes, and foils. However, it is more widely used by homegrown brands where heavy packaging machinery is not utilized and is heavily dependent on manual labor when it comes to shipping and handling operations.

Protective wrapping

Two types of plastic films are used for skin wrapping in packaging: skin poly film and surlyn. Not only are they visually pleasing, but they are also a better and lighter alternative to blister packs and clamshells.

Surlyn is used for vacuum packing items used with coated skin boards. These are opted for only when a high amount of strength and clarity is required. Surlyn is also quite common in the food packaging industry.

Skin poly film is another protective wrapping commonly used in skin packaging, similar to Surlyn. Skin poly is mainly used when the packaging demands a plastic formulation of low-density polyethylene (LDPE). Surlyn is preferred for both high strength and clarity.

Individual product packaging

When choosing individual products, the said sellable products require individual packaging. Some of the other supplies for shipping that are more commonly used are listed below:-

• Aluminum Cans
• Glass Jars
• Paperboard Boxes
• Plastic Bottles 

Best Options for Small Volume Shipments

All customers expect faster and more affordable shipping of their products. Aside from affordable shipping, as a service provider or e-retailer, many major carriers offer numerous free shipping supplies. If you are a startup owner, saving every penny on shipping can help prevent unnecessary costs. Here is a list of suggestions you can consider if you want to save on shipment costs:

• Reuse old packages

For small business shipping supplies, you can save packages you receive from online e-commerce platforms. You can easily recycle them by peeling off old shipping labels and reusing them for shipping out your own products.

• Ask local stores for old boxes

If you want shipping supplies for small businesses, you can consider going to local grocery stores. In many instances, local grocery stores or retailers have numerous cardboard boxes waiting in a corner to be thrown out. You can ask these stores to recycle, sell, or donate their old boxes, which you can reuse for shipping out your orders. 

• Flat rate shipping boxes & mailers

Flat-rate shipping can reduce costs because the shipping price does not depend on the package’s dimensions or weight. Local post offices often tend to have flat-rate envelopes and numerous sizes of available flat-rate boxes. 

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