Shipping oils in bags vs bottles?

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

RogueRose

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 5, 2014
Messages
261
Reaction score
69
I was wondering what you all thought about using something like those food saver vacuum sealed bags to ship oil instead of in bottles. Those bags are SUPER tough, won't burst from pressure, but puncture, sure, and you'd have similar results with plastic.

The thing is with bags I can fit a lot in a flat rate box that is double/triple lined with extra cardboard/Styrofoam to give extra layers of protection.

Does anyone have experience with this or have any opinions on this?
 
I dont know per say if OIL ALONE would work in a food saver bag. But, I did send out a Oily Sugar Scrub that went about 2000 miles from my house. When the person opened the bag and USED the scrub, they wrote me and asked me was it NORMAL for the scrub to be so DRY. Oh ya, it was embarrassing to say the least. I re sent out a NEW scrub in a Tight Fitting Container and have now opted to NOT send out any more sugar scrubs in food saver bags. I truly do NOT know what happened. I wonder if somehow those bags are breathable?? Anyway, I sent it out WET with oil, and the sugar arrived moist, but yet kinda dry, like the oil evaporated. So, that does not answer your question, but still,maybe can give you a view point of something similure that DID happen to me and my product.
 
You haven't really described your precise application. Are you talking about a large amount of liquid in a bag -- say 5 lb (10 kg) of product in a single bag? Or are you thinking about just a small pouch of liquid like a wrapped stick of chewing gum -- more like CBChef's experience?

A bad reputation is quick to get -- it only takes one burst bag and one unhappy customer willing to complain to all.

If you're thinking about small lightweight pouches, I would store your product in-house for a time and see how it changes (or doesn't) with time. I would also package the product in the same bags and ship them to several testers to see how the bags survive the trip. Ship by every method you expect to use. I don't know what country you live in -- I'm in the US and in my experience, USPS mail usually handles small packages well, UPS is often rather rough, and FedEx also usually does well.

Moving on to shipping large amounts of liquid in a bag, I'm rather skeptical. Yes, the bags themselves are pretty resistant to bursting, but the heat sealed edges are not as tough and will split open from impact or being crushed. There is a lot of momentum generated when a 5 lb bag of oil is dropped 3 feet, and the seals must be able to withstand that kind of repeated shock during transit.

I use 5 mil vac bags all the time for freezing and short-term fresh storage of liquidy things (soup, stock, etc). Even though I love my vacuum sealer, I'm not too sure I'd ship heavy liquids in a bag as you propose. I would want to be able to heat seal the product similar to the wide seals made by the original manufacturer AND I would want to package the bag in a heavy-duty, super rigid box, kinda like the boxes that inexpensive "bagged" wine come in, to act as an exoskeleton for the bag. And if you do all that, you are pretty much back where you started with -- might as well use a bottle.
 
Something to take into consideration: changes in altitude during transit. Pressure & temp changes at different elevations (mountains, airplanes) can change the conditions inside the bag, even if you use a vac-sealed bag.
 
I love this question, but I don't want to hi-jack this post, so I'll start my own.
For this post I will ask if the plastic pouches can damage, or compromise product containing EO's
 
Back
Top