What are BOPET Films?

BOPET (biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate) is a polyester film made by stretching polyethylene terephthalate (PET) in its two primary directions to make a versatile engineered film that has amongst its many benefits high tensile strength, chemical and dimensional stability, transparency, reflectivity, gas and aroma barrier properties, and electrical insulation.

BOPET films have enabled many facets of our modern life by providing critical functionality to end markets such as consumer electronics, automotive, green energy and medical devices to name but a few. However, by far the largest use of BOPET film is in flexible packaging structures where the unique set of properties have enabled it to become the backbone that high performance MLP (multi layer plastic) structures are built around. BOPET films are incredibly resource efficient and punch above their weight in the flexible packaging market, and although BOPET films only count for between 5-10% of the overall volume by weight, the percentage of packaging structures that rely on BOPET films’ unique set of properties is a far higher percentage with up to 25% of packs using BOPET as a critical component.