Rollstock

Rollstock is film delivered in roll form, ready to be unwound and run through a customer's own equipment, whether that's a form-fill-seal packaging machine, a printing press, a laminator, or a bag-making line. It stands in contrast to finished converted products like pre-made pouches or bags, where the film producer or a downstream converter has already cut, sealed, and finished the package before it ships. Most flexible packaging film actually moves through the supply chain as rollstock at some stage, even if it eventually becomes a finished bag or pouch further down the line.

When a film producer supplies rollstock directly to a brand owner or packager, the specification typically covers roll width (which may correspond to slit, open sheet width rather than layflat width), gauge, core size and type, roll diameter or length, winding direction, and any treatment like corona treatment needed for printing or lamination. Getting these details right matters because rollstock has to fit and run correctly on equipment the film producer doesn't control or necessarily see firsthand.

Prime Film Extrusion supplies rollstock across a range of monolayer and coextruded structures, slit and wound to customer specifications, for converters and packagers who handle their own printing, bag-making, or form-fill-seal operations downstream.

A snack food company running its own vertical form-fill-seal packaging line will typically order printed rollstock sized and wound to that specific machine's requirements, rather than ordering pre-made pouches.

Rollstock width is sometimes confused with layflat width when a film is supplied slit open rather than as a tube; always confirm whether a quoted roll width refers to the flattened tube measurement or the fully opened, slit sheet width, since they can differ by roughly double depending on how the film was processed.