What non-woven fabric is used for silica gel packets?

You need to package silica gel, but the packets keep splitting open. This messy failure can contaminate your products and ruin your reputation, all because the packaging material wasn't strong enough.

The primary material used for silica gel packets is a heat-sealable non-woven fabric, specifically one made from bicomponent (ES) fibers. This fabric is engineered for a strong seal, high tensile strength, and the right amount of air permeability to allow moisture absorption.

This is a product category we have a lot of experience with at Golden Lily. Making a fabric for desiccant packets seems simple, but it's a delicate balancing act. The material needs to be strong enough to survive a high-speed packaging line but porous enough to let moisture in. It must seal tightly but also be easy to handle and print on. Over the years, we have worked closely with our customers to fine-tune our non-woven fabrics to solve the very specific challenges they face when making these essential little packets.

What makes a non-woven fabric suitable for desiccant packets?

You're sourcing a material for packaging, but the options are overwhelming. Choosing the wrong one means it won't seal properly or print clearly, leading to production delays and wasted material.

A suitable fabric must balance several key features: it needs to be heat-sealable, strong, breathable, and have a printable surface. We achieve this by using specific raw materials, like ES fibers, that are designed for this exact combination of properties.

Creating the ideal fabric for desiccant packaging is all about getting the recipe right. It’s not just one feature, but a combination of several that work together. The foundation of our material is the bicomponent ES fiber. This fiber has a high-melt point core for strength and a low-melt point outer sheath. This design is what makes perfect heat sealing possible. The processability of the fabric is just as important. It must have enough strength and stretch (elongation) to handle the stress of automated filling machines, where it is pulled, filled with heavy silica beads, and sealed in fractions of a second. Finally, the surface must be uniform and smooth. Our thermal bonding process creates a flat surface that is excellent for printing logos and instructions, which is a key requirement for most of our clients.

Property	Why It's Important	How We Achieve It
Heat-Sealability	Creates a strong, clean seal to contain the beads.	Using low-melt point ES bicomponent fibers.
Air Permeability	Allows moisture to pass through to the silica gel.	The natural porous structure of a non-woven web.
Strength & Elongation	Withstands the stress of automated filling machines.	High-quality core fibers and a strong thermal bond.
Printability	Allows for branding and instructions on the packet.	A smooth, uniform surface from the hot-rolling process.

How do you prevent desiccant packets from bursting open?

You have a perfect production run, but then you get reports of packets bursting. The desiccant filling process is simply too aggressive for the fabric, causing frustrating and costly failures.

We prevent packets from bursting by adjusting the raw materials in our non-woven fabric. By increasing the fabric's tensile strength and seal integrity, we ensure it can withstand the force of the filling and sealing process without tearing or breaking at the seams.

This is a real problem that one of our customers brought to us. They told me, "Your fabric is great, but when our machines fill the packets, the force of the silica gel hitting the bottom is enough to break the seal open." This was critical feedback. The problem wasn't the fabric itself tearing, but the seal failing under impact. My background is in fiber materials, so we went back to our production line to find a solution. We realized we needed to improve the bond strength.

Our team worked on adjusting the blend of fibers we were using. We incorporated a slightly different type of bicomponent fiber that created a stronger, more resilient melt bond when heated. The fabric looked and felt almost identical, but the new formulation made the seal significantly tougher. We sent the new batch to our customer, and the problem was solved. They could run their filling machines at full speed without any more burst packets. This experience taught us that listening to customer feedback is the fastest way to improve our product and solve real-world manufacturing challenges.

How do you solve processing problems like sticky cutting blades?

Your slitting machines are getting gummed up. The non-woven fabric is sticking to the cutting blades, causing downtime for cleaning and creating rough, messy edges on your final product.

We solve the problem of "sticky blades" by carefully adjusting the surface properties and fiber blend of the non-woven material. This modification ensures the fabric cuts cleanly without leaving residue on the processing equipment.

This was another challenge a client brought to me. During their production process, they take our wide rolls of non-woven fabric and cut them down into narrow widths for their specific packet size. This is called slitting. The client reported that our material was leaving a slight residue on their circular cutting blades. Over time, this buildup would cause the material to "stick" to the knife, leading to poor cuts and forcing them to stop the machine for cleaning.

This issue is often related to the low-melt fibers we use for heat sealing. If the surface has too much of this low-melt component exposed, the friction and heat generated by a high-speed blade can soften it just enough to cause stickiness. Our solution was to tweak the formula again. By making subtle adjustments to the fiber blend and the cooling parameters in our thermal bonding process, we were able to create a fabric with a slightly "harder" surface finish. This change was invisible to the naked eye and didn't affect the fabric's heat-seal performance, but it completely eliminated the sticky blade problem. The customer could now run their slitting machines continuously without interruption.

Conclusion

The best non-woven for silica gel is a heat-sealable ES fabric. We continuously refine our material based on customer feedback to ensure it offers the perfect balance of strength, breathability, and processability.