Getting a Hold of Sliding Pet Food Bags

By Kyle Knott, Senior Accounts Manager

One of the common struggles with large, plastic pet food packaging is how to keep the bags from sliding off the pallet. This is an issue during production as well as during shipping. Nothing will ruin your day like having a favorite customer call demanding a credit on product when the bags arrive at their store broken in the back of a delivery truck. Luckily, there are some safeguards to protect your product from production to store shelf.

Manufacturing facilities usually require some type of anti-slip agent. Often experts at the plant will let you know which kind of performance additions they will need to run your bags through the production cycle. However, I run into a lot of customers that get duped into low-cost packaging that won’t run efficiently in their copacker’s plant. This can end up costing the end user more money with added fees for hand stacking.

When it comes to buying bags, nothing is free. An anti-slip agent is no exception. There are two main types of anti-slip available for bags: HICOF Polyester and “Anti-Skid”. There is a difference between the two in terms of performance and cost.

HICOF stands for High Coefficient of Friction. This is when two pieces of HICOF materials are rubbing up against each other, they tend to “stick” together. The materials don’t bond to each other. They do however have a grip which helps keeps them from sliding off one another when they are being stacked or in transit. The good thing about HICOF is you can’t see it so it won’t interrupt the graphics on your bags. It’s also the cheaper of the two options. The down side is, HICOF tends to have a higher slide angle. HICOF Polyester can be a great, low cost alternative to Anti-

Skid but you need to make sure your packaging company can deliver this quality product. 

Anti-Skid is an over lacquer that is placed on the top of the bag. Anti-Skid has a very high slide angle and is extremely affective at keeping bags sturdy on pallets. However, there are a few drawbacks. Anti-Skid can increase your bag cost by 5-10%. It is also not recommended if your packaging needs a “matte” appearance. For printing, your matte layer is an over-lacquer as well. So, anti-skid will cancel out the matte effect and give the bags a glossy appearance. Adding an Anti-Skid is as close to a sure bet for non-slip bags as you can get.

Pacific Bag packaging formats include both HICOF and Anti-Skid options. Contact us for more information.