05/26/2026
Warehouses are getting more automated. The loads moving through them are getting more varied. And the stretch wrapper setting that worked fine last Tuesday may be exactly wrong for what's running today.
Here's the problem with treating stretch wrapping as a set-and-forget process: not all pallet loads are equal. A pallet of uniform cartons is stable, predictable, and relatively forgiving if it's wrapped with a little less film than ideal. A pallet of 2-liter beverage bottles — unstable geometry, no shells, heavy and prone to shifting — can require four times the containment force to hold together safely.
Most operations run both. Many run a dozen load types across multiple SKUs, on the same equipment, across multiple shifts, with operators who apply different judgment about when a wrap looks "right."
The result is variability. Some loads leave the wrapper over-wrapped — more film than needed, higher cost, no additional protection. Some leave under-wrapped — the ones that shift in the truck, or increasingly, the ones that become unstable while an automated system is trying to move them around the warehouse.
That second category is where the real cost shows up — not on a shipping damage report, but in system downtime. An AMR system doesn't accommodate an unstable load. It stops. Somebody has to walk over and clear it. In a facility designed to run with minimal labor, that's a bigger disruption than it sounds.
Industry research across FMCG sectors consistently finds that approximately 50% of in-transit product damage traces back to ineffective stretch wrapping. The same root cause — inconsistent or insufficient containment force — creates comparable problems inside automated facilities. The difference is that inside the facility, the cost shows up in throughput and labor, not in a chargeback.
The answer isn't more wrapping. It's the right wrapping, for the right load, every time.
Operations that have moved to automated load profiling — where the machine sets containment force based on the load type rather than relying on operator judgment — consistently report fewer film breaks, more consistent loads, and lower film cost per pallet.
More wrapping doesn't mean better containment. Correct wrapping does.
