The reason for the switch, according to TizWhiz president Jason Dehaven, is durability. “The bags are a lot tougher than what paper is.” Coming in a strong second is the bags’ look. “The bag has a nice shelf presence to it,” he adds. “It looks good on the shelf and stays that way. The bag doesn’t crinkle like paper. You could say it stays fresh looking, and retailers like them.”
Supplied by Coating Excellence Intl. (www.coating-excellence.com), the bags are made of reverse-printed 70-ga biaxially oriented polypropylene laminated to 10x10 850 denier woven PP with 10# of PP resin. The bags are supplied premade with a sewn strip along the top with tabs providing a finger hold and bag opening feature. “You grab the little tab and it opens right up,” says Dehaven. They are bottom-filled and heat-sealed.
Dehaven describes the bags as rain-repellent, which provides customers more storage options: “moisture is not the factor it is with a paper bag.” He says the plastic bags are on a cost parity with multiwall paper bags, yet are of a better quality and consistency than “cheaper” plastic bags provided by overseas vendors that some of his contacts have used.
TizWhiz products are distributed to farm stores, like Tractor Supply Co., throughout the United States and Canada, packaged locally at about 15 independent locations, Dehaven explains. The company packages and provides eight types of horsefeed.
TizWhiz began transitioning into the new packaging around late 2006 for 50-lb bags of horsefeed. The company plans to roll out the film bags for other products as current packaging supplies are exhausted, Dehaven says.
