What stretch film really costs
The film itself is the small number. The real cost is the labour either side of it: someone wraps the pallet at dispatch, someone cuts it open at putaway, someone re-wraps it if the pallet goes back into storage part-picked, and someone collects the waste film off the floor.
Add the damage. Film holds a stack together until it does not — the bottom cartons still carry the weight of everything above them, and a leaning pallet arrives as a claim.
Where a steel frame replaces the film
A stillage or pallet cage does the job film was pretending to do: it contains the load and carries the stacking weight through steel posts instead of through the cartons underneath.
The highest-value streams to switch first are the ones that get handled most.
- Stock that moves between your own sites or branches
- Anything picked part-pallet, then put back into storage
- Loose, awkward or heavy stock that never wraps well anyway
- Returnable runs out to customers, sites or fitters
The labour saving at the dock
Putaway on a wrapped pallet is: land it, cut the film, clear the film, check the load, put it away. With a cage it is: land it, put it away. Picking is a gate that drops instead of a knife and a re-wrap.
Across a busy dock, removing two handling steps from every pallet movement is the sort of change that shows up in overtime before it shows up in a spreadsheet.
The environmental line you can actually report
Stretch film is single-use plastic that is difficult to recycle once it is contaminated with tape and labels. A steel frame that runs for years replaces thousands of wraps over its life.
For businesses reporting on packaging or waste targets, replacing film on high-movement streams is a measurable, defensible reduction rather than an offset.
Making the switch without disrupting the floor
You do not need to convert everything at once. Pick one stream, size frames to your existing pallet footprint so your forklifts and jacks need no changes, and run it for a month against your wrapped equivalent.
Count three things: handling time per movement, damage claims, and how many frames come back. Foldable frames collapse when empty, so the return leg carries roughly four times what the delivery did — that number usually decides it.
Where to start
Send us the stream you handle most, the load weight and the footprint your gear expects. We will spec the frame, tell you honestly where film is still the cheaper answer, and quote the rest.