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3 colour printing

Fully customisable

Custom Self-Adhesive Tape

Minimum order quantity: 144

Custom self-adhesive tape (also known as personalised packing tape) is a great way to securely seal any package and brand plain packaging. Add colours, logos and artwork with 3-colour printing and apply with a tape dispenser for fast fulfilment.

  • Water-based inks
  • 3 colour printing
  • Available in 48mm and 72mm

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Key features

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What is self-adhesive tape

Self-adhesive tape, also known as stick tape or self-stick tape, is a type of tape that has a pressure-sensitive adhesive coated on one or both sides of a backing material, often paper. This allows it to stick without the need for heat or other activators like solvents, making it easy to apply, versatile and cost-effective.

Benefits of self-adhesive tape

Self-adhesive is the fastest and easiest way to seal your packaging and brand it at the same time. Whilst this can give your brand a boost on any package, it’s especially effective for unbranded packaging, like a plain shipping box. And with 3-colour printing, you have a lot of flexibility when it comes to your tape design. Branding your packaging is essential to stand out from the competition and deliver a memorable unboxing experience.

As self-adhesive tape sticks to almost any packaging material, it’s also more versatile than other packaging tapes, like gummed tape which can only stick to paper packaging. For your team, that means one less SKU to manage, order and store, as well as cost savings from buying larger quantities of one type of personalised tape. Self-adhesive tape can also be applied with standard tape dispensers, which are cheaper than gummed tape dispensers. If you’re packaging large order volumes or simply have a large fulfilment team, this can make a big difference to packaging costs and times.

How to choose the right self-adhesive tape

Here’s how to choose the right self-adhesive tape for your brand:

1. Material: choose either brown kraft paper or white kraft paper. Brown kraft paper is unbleached, which makes it more sustainable than white kraft paper. If sustainability is your top priority, we recommend brown kraft paper. As it’s brown though, colours in your packaging tape design or artwork will appear more muted. If colour reproduction and branding are your top priorities, we recommend white kraft paper.

2. Width: choose either 48mm or 72mm. 72mm tape is stronger than 48mm but uses more material, making it slightly more expensive and less sustainable. If you’re shipping heavy items, we recommend 72mm. Both widths come in rolls of 50m long.

After this, you can also choose how many print colours you want on your personalised packing tape. This should be determined by your artwork. For example, if you want to print a one-colour logo on a solid colour background, you can choose two print colours. You can choose between one and three print colours (ideal for multi-coloured designs) or leave your custom tape blank. This is the most sustainable option when combined with brown kraft paper.

Is self-adhesive tape recyclable?

Self-adhesive tape is not recyclable on its own as it uses a laminated layer to secure any ink. To avoid contaminating waste streams, dispose of it with general waste.

If your self-adhesive tape is stuck to recyclable packaging, however, it can be recycled. The only condition is that the weight of the tape is less than 20% of the total package weight.

Carbon footprint

See how the carbon footprint of Sourceful’s self adhesive tape compares to a benchmark product.

How is this calculated?

Two carbon footprint comparisons between self adhesive tape and PVC tape, and self adhesive tape and PP tape.

Reduce your carbon footprint by up to 20%

-20% CO2e

Switching base material and adhesive from a typical PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) tape could reduce your carbon footprint by up to 20%.

-10% CO2e

Switching base material and adhesive from a typical BOPP (Biaxially Oriented PolyPropylene) tape could reduce your carbon footprint by up to 10%.

Specification

Understand your entire supply chain

Node map of self adhesive tape's carbon footprint.
Carbon footprint breakdown of self adhesive tape.
Materials
Emissions from self adhesive tape's materials. 67% of the total carbon footprint.
  1. Bk

    Brown kraft paper

    Unbleached paper made from virgin pulp. Brown kraft paper is the most sustainable material for this self adhesive tape. Ideal for simple, bold designs. Bright colours will appear more muted on brown kraft tape.
  2. Wk

    White kraft paper

    Bleached paper made from virgin pulp. White kraft paper has a higher carbon footprint than brown kraft paper but colours appear much brighter.
  3. 48

    48mm

    48mm is the industry-standard width for tape. Suitable for the majority of use cases.
  4. 72

    72mm

    72mm tape is stronger than 48mm but uses more material to produce. Ideal for heavier or wider packages as the tape covers a greater surface area.
  5. Sa

    Solvent-based adhesive

    Pressure-activated adhesive. Doesn’t need water or heat to adhere to packaging.
  6. Wb

    Water-based inks

    Made with water as their primary base, these inks are designed for flexographic printing. More sustainable than solvent-based inks.
  7. Cb

    Core board

    Used for the core of tape rolls. Core board allows tape to be handled, stored, transported and easily used. Core board is 100% recyclable.
  8. Sv

    Solvent-based varnish

    Varnish is applied to self adhesive tape to prevent it from adhering together when wound.

Supply chain assurance

A resilient, responsible supply chain

Certifications

We validate all supplier claims and third-party certifications such as ISO, BRC and FSC. And we ensure suppliers adhere to UK and EU laws on chemicals and product components, like UK REACH. This allows businesses to confidently buy high-quality products that align with a net-zero trajectory.

Look for our FSC® certified products.

Vetted suppliers

We visit and vet every supplier we work with. We use our code of conduct to do this, which defines what we consider to be ethical working conditions. To work with Sourceful, suppliers and their manufacturing sites must meet this code. We then review their practices every year.

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Quality control

Every order from our suppliers undergoes a quality inspection process before it’s shipped. Any order that fails quality inspection is returned to the manufacturer or reproduced immediately.

For orders manufactured internationally (outside the UK) we follow the Acceptable Quality Limit (AQL) method defined by ISO standards in ISO 2859 - 1.

For domestic orders manufactured in the UK we align supplier quality control processes with our own, performing spot checks on the supplier’s products from each lot throughout the year.

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