Long gone are the days when bulk shipments of everything from industrial chemicals to food and beverage ingredients came only in 55-gal metal drums or even larger rigid containers. Today, the watchword in bulk packaging is flexible. Shipping sacks, flexible intermediate bulk containers (FIBCs) and film wraps are the key converted products for this field. And while still used in conjunction with drums, bins and boxes, flexible plastic liners are a hot growth product as well.

Overall, US demand for flexible bulk packaging is expected to increase 3.4 percent a year to $6.38 billion in 2011, according to a new study by Cleveland-based market researcher The Freedonia Group (www.freedoniagroup.com). Advances will be supported by a combination of ever-present consumer spending and growth in food and beverage production—the leading flexible bulk-packaging market.

Film wrap, which accounted for 32 percent of total flexible bulk-packaging demand in 2006, will continue to log robust gains, climbing 6.2 percent annually through 2011. Sales are forecasted to rise from $1.93 billion to $2.61 billion four years hence, the report says. Continued requirements for the bundling and protection of goods during transportation and storage will drive this growth. Retail trends, such as the popularity of club stores and other mass-market retailers that use shrink wrap for multipack items and pallet wrap for product warehousing, will support demand.

Although shipping sacks will see generally slow growth of only 1.7 percent a year (see chart), plastic-sack demand will increase at an above-average pace as these containers continue to take market share away from paper and textile alternatives primarily due to their lower cost. As a result, by 2011, plastic will command more than half of the $2.69-billion US shipping-sack market, Freedonia predicts.

Drum, bin and box liners will see healthy gains of 3.5 percent a year, with sales climbing from $610 million to $725 million in 2011. Protection properties and the ability to facilitate the reuse of rigid containers and FIBCs are factors driving liner sales.

Plastic will remain the dominant flexible bulk-packaging material, with consumption far outpacing other materials in the next four years. The leading plastic resin will continue to be polyethylene due to its attractive cost/performance profile and its heavy usage in the large film-wrap segment, the report says. Although downgauging of materials will limit plastic consumption to some extent, this effect will be softened by the increasing applications for a number of products and the ongoing replacement of paper shipping sacks by their plastic counterparts.