If your business ships delicate, expensive, rare, or highly calibrated items, foam packaging is the best way to prevent damage.
Foam packaging protects products, parts and components during shipping. It can take the form of lined boxes, bespoke inserts, trays, or blocks. Businesses typically use packaging foam within an outer cardboard box or carton. It can prevent damage caused by shock, impact, mishandling, and vibration.
At Suttons Performance Packaging, we have pioneered the use of high-performance foam in specialist packaging applications to ensure maximum protection during handling and transit. No other foam packaging supplier in the UK has our depth of experience in the fabrication of polyurethane, Stratocell®, and Plastazote polyethylene foam materials. As a result, we have been a Sealed Air Approved Packaging Partner for over 25 years.
Our extensive design team, state-of-the-art foam conversion equipment and modern UK production facility ensures your foam packaging is always of the highest quality.
There are several types of foam for packaging. These include Stratocell and Ethafoam, which are often used for single-trip applications, and Plastazote, which is more common for reusable packaging and long-term storage.
Foam packaging is suitable for a range of applications. Its most common use is to brace and cushion delicate products within single-trip corrugated packaging. Besides foam packaging boxes, foams are also popular for lining flight cases and other protective cases, or even for presenting items as part of retail packaging.
While packaging foam is 100% recyclable, UK kerbside recycling schemes do not typically accept it (due to its low density and high processing costs). Foam packaging materials are processed at specialist recycling centres, whilst many foam converters accept waste foam packaging, which they then process and recycle themselves (working with the material manufacturers). Recycled grades of foam material are also available.
There are two types of foam packaging: open-cell and closed-cell. In closed-cell foams, the individual cells or bubbles are not connected, making the material denser, more rigid, and moisture-resistant. Open-cell foams have joined cells, which make the material much softer. Foam packaging manufacturers typically use closed-cell foams.
At Suttons Protective Packaging, we are experts in bespoke, specialist protective packaging for high-value parts and products.
We are an award-winning manufacturer of bespoke packaging and one of the UK’s largest converters of Stratocell® polyethylene foam, designing and producing unique packaging solutions.
Our tailor-made foam solutions call upon our specialist knowledge of materials, production capabilities, conversion constraints, and supply-chain practicalities. Whether driven by just-in-time service agreements or the ship-to-line demands of lean manufacturing, we tailor each packaging solution to your business’s specific needs.
From CAD drawing submissions, sample-making, and drop testing to ‘kitting’ and service level agreements, our ISO standards and procedures ensure that each project moves from prototype to finished product with care and control.
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If your business uses foam packaging, requires high-performance, custom packaging solutions, or struggles with transit damage, space restrictions, or packing times, we can help. Please speak with one of our foam packaging experts today.
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Our experts
The information on this page was written and checked by our team of packaging experts:
Technical Sales
David Prew
[email protected] | 01354 693 171
Quotes / Pricing
James Arran
[email protected] | 01354 691 859
Customer Service
Kay Goodman
[email protected] | 01354 691 853