Wrapping machines fall into four families by how the film goes on: sealed around the product from a reel (flow, twist, fold, band and overwrappers), shrunk onto it with heat (shrink wrappers), stretched around it under tension with no heat (stretch, orbital, ring, coil and luggage wrappers), or drawn down over it onto a board (skin packaging). The family follows from the product; the machine within the family follows from your throughput and your film.
These fourteen machines are the wrapping types you will meet on quotations, sorted by mechanism first and typical products second — the mechanism column is the one that decides the family.
| Type | How it works | Typical products |
|---|---|---|
| Flow wrapping machine | Wraps film around a product horizontally and creates a longitudinal seal plus end seals | Candy bars, biscuits, bread, vegetables, hardware |
| Vertical form-fill-seal machine | Forms a bag from film vertically, fills the product, then seals it | Chips, nuts, coffee, powders, frozen foods |
| Shrink wrapping machine | Encloses products in shrink film and passes them through heat so the film contracts tightly | Bottles, boxes, multipacks, books |
| Stretch wrapping machine | Stretches plastic film around products or pallet loads without using heat | Pallets, cartons, industrial loads |
| Overwrapping machine | Folds film around a box or rectangular product, similar to gift wrapping | Cigarette cartons, cosmetics, tea boxes, pharmaceuticals |
| Cellophane wrapping machine | A type of overwrapper using cellophane or BOPP film, often with folded ends | Perfume boxes, medicine boxes, tobacco products |
| Twist wrapping machine | Wraps a product and twists the film at one or both ends | Candies, chocolates, confectionery |
| Fold wrapping machine | Folds wrapping material closely around the product without producing a conventional bag | Chocolate bars, butter, soap |
| Band wrapping machine | Wraps a narrow band of film or paper around part of the product | Promotional packs, boxes, printed materials |
| Orbital wrapping machine | Product moves horizontally through a rotating film ring | Pipes, profiles, timber, long products |
| Ring wrapping machine | Film carriage rotates through and around ring-shaped products | Tires, cable coils, hoses, bearings |
| Reel/coil wrapping machine | Specifically designed to wrap coils with protective film, paper, or other materials | Steel coils, wire coils, cable |
| Luggage wrapping machine | Rotates baggage while stretch film is applied around it | Suitcases, airport baggage |
| Skin packaging machine | Heated transparent film conforms closely to a product and seals to a backing board | Tools, hardware, retail parts |
A flow wrapper pulls film off a reel, folds it into a tube around a line of products moving horizontally, seals the tube lengthwise underneath — the fin seal — and then crimps and cuts across the tube between products to make the two end seals. The result is the pillow pack on most bars, biscuits and bread, and the same machine handles trays, blister cards and small hardware kits.
The product has to be solid enough for a lug on the infeed chain to push it into the film tube, and regular enough to sit at a fixed pitch. That pitch is why a rated speed is only true for the product it was rated on: each pack uses one product length plus the end-seal allowance of film, so a longer product means fewer packs per minute at the same film speed, and a soft or tall product limits how fast the crimp jaws can close without marking it. Ask a flow wrapping machine supplier for the speed on your product dimensions, not the catalogue maximum.
Loose product — chips, granules, powder — is not a flow-wrap job, because nothing can push it down a horizontal film tube. That is what a vertical form-fill-seal machine is for: it forms the bag around a filling tube and drops the dose in from above.
A shrink wrapper closes a loose envelope of shrink film around the product and passes it through a heat tunnel, where the film contracts and pulls tight against whatever shape is inside. Because the film takes the product’s shape rather than the machine’s, this is the family for irregular items, mixed shapes and multipacks — bottles, boxes, books, trays of cans.
Three layouts cover most of it. An L-bar sealer folds centre-folded film around the item and closes the two open sides in one stroke — the low-to-mid-volume machine for single items. A side sealer runs continuously and seals along the length, for higher speeds and long products. A sleeve wrapper or bundler pushes a group through a curtain of film, seals an open-ended sleeve and shrinks it — the case-replacing multipack of water or cans at the end of a secondary packaging line.
The limits are the heat and the film. Products that soften or sweat in the tunnel — chocolate, some fresh produce — need a different family, and the film has to be a shrink grade (polyolefin for retail clarity, thicker polyethylene for bundles), which rules out the heat-seal laminates a flow wrapper runs.
A stretch wrapper winds stretch film around a load under tension and relies on the film’s elastic recovery to hold the load together — no heat, no seal, the tail simply clings to the layer beneath. It is the end-of-line machine for pallets, and for cartons and industrial loads that need unitising for transit rather than presentation.
The layouts differ by what moves. On a turntable machine the pallet rotates while the film carriage climbs a mast; a mid-range turntable is sized for a few dozen pallets a day. On a rotary-arm machine the load stands still and the arm orbits it, for loads too heavy or unstable to spin. On a ring machine one or two film heads travel on a ring around the stationary load, which is the fastest layout.
Within any layout, the thing to specify is powered pre-stretch: a carriage that passes the film between two rollers turning at different speeds, stretching it before it reaches the load. Stretch films are rated for pre-stretch in the 150–300% range, and at 150% every metre off the roll becomes 2.5 metres on the pallet, so pre-stretch is first a film-economy lever.
Whether it also holds the load tighter is not settled, so buy pre-stretch for the film saving and prove containment on your own load.
An overwrapper cuts a sheet of film, wraps it around a rectangular box and folds the ends in like a gift wrap, tacking the folds with heated plates. There is no fin seal and no crimped end, which is why the wrap sits tight on a cigarette carton, a perfume box or a tea carton, and why the film is usually BOPP or cellophane with a tear tape laid in. The cellophane wrapping machine in the table is this machine running cellophane.
The product has to be rigid and rectangular — the folds are made against the box’s edges, so a soft or rounded item gives the machine nothing to fold against. That rigidity is also the trade against flow wrapping: the overwrap looks better and shows the box, the flow wrap runs faster and takes anything a lug can push. Pharma and cosmetics pay for the fold; biscuits do not.
A twist wrapper folds a sheet of film around a single piece and twists the film closed at one or both ends — no heat seal, the twist holds because the film keeps its shape. It is the confectionery machine: hard candy, toffees, chocolate pieces, and the single-twist bunch wrap on round chocolates and lollipops.
Two things decide whether a product suits it. The piece must be firm enough to be picked from a hopper disc and gripped while it is twisted; a soft centre or a piece that deforms under grip comes out crushed or mis-wrapped. And the film must hold a twist: waxed paper, cellophane and twist-grade polyester or polypropylene do, ordinary heat-seal laminates spring back open.
A fold wrapper folds foil or paper closely around a bar or block in a fixed fold pattern — an envelope fold at the ends, or a roll fold along the length — and closes it with the fold itself, a spot of heat or a band, not with a bag-style seal. Chocolate bars in foil with a paper band, butter and margarine in parchment or foil, and bar soap in paper are the classic fits.
The material has to dead-fold — stay where it is creased — which is why fold wrappers run foil, paper and foil laminates and not plastics that spring back. The product must be a firm block with square edges to fold against; a bar that has softened in a warm room stops folding cleanly.
Where a printed paper band goes over the foil, the band wrapper from the table is the second station: it wraps a narrow strip around part of the product and seals or glues the overlap.
An orbital wrapper holds a ring carrying a reel of stretch film in a fixed vertical plane while the product is conveyed through the ring horizontally, so the film spirals around the length of whatever passes through. It is the machine for long stock — pipe, extruded profiles, timber, doors, bundles of bar — where a pallet wrapper cannot reach the ends and a shrink tunnel would be impractically long.
The ring diameter fixes the largest cross-section the machine takes, and conveyor speed against ring speed sets the overlap of the spiral. Long parts are usually bundled in the cradle first and wrapped as one unit, so film tension is set for the bundle, not the individual part. The product enters and leaves on roller conveyors at the same height, which is what lets it sit at the end of an extrusion or sawing line without a lift.
Ring and coil wrappers pass a film or paper shuttle through the eye of the product — a tire, a hose reel, a cable coil, a steel coil — while the product is turned slowly on rollers, so the wrap covers the cross-section of the ring and every surface is protected. That through-the-eye motion is what separates them from an orbital wrapper, where the product passes through the machine’s ring instead of the machine passing through the product’s.
The name needs qualifying, because in pallet wrapping “ring wrapper” means a stretch wrapper whose film heads travel on a ring around a stationary pallet — the high-speed layout in the stretch section above, and the machine most pallet-line buyers picture when they hear the word. The ring wrapping machine in the table is the through-the-eye machine for ring-shaped products. Say “through-the-eye” or “pallet ring” at enquiry stage and the supplier quotes the right one.
Coil wrappers are the heavy end of the same principle. Steel and wire coils are wrapped in paper, VCI or polyethylene for corrosion and edge protection, the coil resting on driven rollers while the shuttle circles through the bore. The eye has to be open and large enough for the shuttle to pass; a coil with a small bore, or one banded so the eye is blocked, needs a different machine, which is worth checking before a coil wrapper is quoted at all.
Choose the family first from what the wrap has to do for the product — present it (flow, overwrap, twist, fold), protect or bundle it (shrink), or hold it together for transit (stretch, orbital, ring, coil) — and only then compare machines inside that family on the throughput you can actually hold, the film you can actually buy, and the changeover you can live with. The table settles the family for most products; the checks below settle the machine.
