When Was Cling Film Invented? UK & World Timeline

Quick answer: Cling film was not invented in one moment, and it was not invented in the UK. The material, polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC), was found by accident at Dow Chemical in Michigan in 1933. Dow trademarked it as Saran in 1940 and launched Saran Wrap as a household food wrap in 1949. Two other founding steps followed. Kureha launched Japan’s first household wrap, Krewrap, in 1960. Union Carbide launched polyethylene Glad Wrap in the US in 1963 and in Australia in 1966. In Britain, cling film became an everyday kitchen product during the 1960s and 1970s. The word “cling film” appears in dictionary records from the 1970s. By 1987 PVC cling film was used widely enough in UK shops that a plasticiser-migration finding became a national food-safety story.

We have manufactured PVC and PE cling film in Ningbo since 2004. Distributors ask us about this history more often than you’d expect, usually when they’re writing product copy and want the dates right. Most versions online get at least one date wrong. So here is the timeline with sources, and what each chapter means for the film you buy today.

Cling Film Timeline at a Glance

Year	What happened	Material	Where
1933	Ralph Wiley finds a stubborn residue in lab glassware at Dow Chemical	PVDC	Midland, Michigan, USA
1940	Dow registers the “Saran” trademark	PVDC	USA
1940s	PVDC film protects military equipment from salt and moisture in wartime shipping	PVDC	USA
1947	Dow staff Curly Irons and Russ Ludwig sell 12-inch × 25-foot rolls as “cling wrap”	PVDC	USA
1949	Dow launches Saran Wrap for household food wrapping	PVDC	USA
1960	Kureha launches Krewrap, Japan’s first household plastic wrap	PVDC	Japan
1963	Union Carbide launches Glad Wrap in the US	PE + tackifier	USA
1966	Glad Wrap launches in Australia, the first cling wrap sold there	PE	Australia
1960s-70s	Cling film spreads through British kitchens and supermarket packing rooms	PVC and PE	UK
1987	UK findings on DEHA plasticiser migration from PVC film into cheese make headlines	Plasticised PVC	UK
1990	MAFF survey finds “old-style” high-migration PVC wrap no longer in use	PVC	UK
1998	S.C. Johnson acquires Saran Wrap from Dow	PVDC	USA
2004	US Saran Wrap reformulated from PVDC to polyethylene	PE	USA
2011	EU Regulation 10/2011 sets migration limits for plastic food-contact materials	All plastics	EU (retained in UK law after Brexit)
2030	New deadline for all English councils to collect plastic film from households (delayed from 2027)	Films incl. wrap	England

The sections below go through each chapter. Pay attention to the material column. The film changed chemistry three times, and each change still shows up in today’s buying decisions.

1933-1949: A Lab Accident Becomes Saran Wrap

The story begins with a washing-up problem. In 1933, Dow Chemical lab worker Ralph Wiley was developing a dry-cleaning solvent (perchloroethylene). He found a residue in his beakers that wouldn’t scrub off. That residue was polyvinylidene chloride, or PVDC.

PVDC was waterproof, strong and very resistant to oxygen and moisture. Those properties still make it the benchmark barrier film today. Its early customers had nothing to do with food:

• Military protection. A division of General Motors asked for a flexible film to keep machine guns from corroding on their way overseas. PVDC became the standard wrap for anything that had to survive salt air.
• Boot insoles. In 1942, woven PVDC mesh was tested as a ventilating insole for jungle combat boots.
• Dow registered the Saran trademark in 1940 but didn’t sell it to consumers yet. Early PVDC was greenish and had an unpleasant smell. Wiley and his boss, John Reilly, had to fix both before it could go near food.

The step from military film to kitchen product came from inside Dow. In 1947, employees Carroll “Curly” Irons and Russ Ludwig bought spools of the film, cut it into 12-inch-wide, 25-foot rolls, and sold it as “cling wrap” on the side. Dow executive Charles Strosacker noticed. Dow bought their venture in 1948, and in 1949 launched Saran Wrap as a retail food wrap. Fridge ownership was growing fast in post-war American homes, and the product took off.

Why PVDC mattered: its oxygen permeability is about 0.6 cm³·µm/(m²·day·kPa) at 23°C and 95% relative humidity. That is far lower than polyethylene. No later cling film has matched it as a barrier. Our Saran Wrap guide covers the chemistry in more detail.

1960-1966: Three Countries, Three Chemistries

In the early 1960s, cling film split into the three families that still exist today.

Japan, 1960: PVDC for the home. Kureha launched Krewrap, the first household plastic wrap sold in Japan. Asahi Kasei, through a joint venture with Dow, brought Saran Wrap to Japanese consumers around the same time. Both Japanese brands have stayed with PVDC ever since. That is why Japanese households still use a higher-barrier, stickier wrap than most American households do.

Australia and the US, 1963-1966: polyethylene arrives. Union Carbide research chemist Douglas Lyons Ford developed a polyethylene film with a tackifier (“stickifier”) added. He worked at Union Carbide Australia’s Rhodes plant in Sydney. The film was made as a continuous tube by the blown-film method and then slit flat. Union Carbide launched it as Glad Wrap in the US in 1963, and Glad Wrap reached Australia in 1966. It was the first cling wrap on Australian shelves, which is why Australians still call any cling film “Glad Wrap”.

PVC: the professional’s film. Plasticised PVC was not a household-brand story. It grew out of the wider flexible-PVC industry. PVC can be made very soft and very clingy by adding plasticiser, and it recovers well after stretching. Those properties made it the standard for butcher trays, supermarket back rooms and catering kitchens, and it still is. Today a standard 300 mm × 1,500 m catering roll of 8-12 µm PVC cling film is a direct descendant of that period.

Family	First household launch	Cling	Oxygen/moisture barrier	Relative cost	Where it dominates today
PVDC	1949 (US), 1960 (Japan)	High	Best	Highest	Japanese households; specialty barrier packaging
Plasticised PVC	1960s (professional use)	Highest	Medium	Low	Butchers, delis, catering, supermarket packing
Polyethylene (LDPE/LLDPE)	1963 (US), 1966 (Australia)	Low to medium, needs tackifier	Lowest	Lowest	Retail household rolls in the US, UK and EU

For a head-to-head comparison of the two families you can buy in bulk today, see PVC cling film vs PE cling wrap.

When Did Cling Film Arrive in the UK?

This is the question most UK searchers ask, and the honest answer has two parts.

First, nothing about cling film was invented in Britain. The PVDC chemistry is American, polyethylene cling wrap came out of Australia and the US, and Japan had household wrap by 1960. Several websites say plastic wrap was “appearing in households across the UK” by 1953. We could not find any source behind that date. It looks like the American “in homes since 1953” figure copied over to the UK.

Second, the evidence that does exist points to the 1960s and 1970s:

• The word itself. The Oxford English Dictionary’s evidence for the noun “cling film” begins in the 1970s. A product usually gets a settled everyday name only once people use it a lot. Before that, British shoppers bought branded products or simply said “plastic wrap”.
• The rise of the supermarket. British self-service supermarkets grew quickly through the 1960s. Pre-packed meat, cheese and produce on trays needed a clear, clingy overwrap, which was exactly the job PVC film was built for.
• The 1987 DEHA story. By the mid-1980s, PVC cling film was everywhere in British food retail. In 1987 UK findings showed the plasticiser DEHA migrating from PVC wrap into cheese and other fatty foods, and the story became national news. The London Food Commission campaigned on it between 1987 and 1990, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) kept surveying plasticisers. A product has to be well established before its migration levels become a public-health issue.

So if you need one line for a product description: cling film was invented in the US (1933-1949) and became a standard British kitchen product in the 1960s and 1970s. For how the name differs by country, from “film transparente” to “Glad Wrap”, see our cling film names around the world guide.

Writing product copy or a private-label box? We supply PVC and PE cling film under your brand, with carton artwork, roll sizes and compliance paperwork done for your market. Tell us your market and roll size and we’ll send a spec sheet and FOB Ningbo quote within 24 hours.

1987-1990: The Plasticiser Scare That Changed PVC Film

This chapter matters most to anyone buying PVC cling film today, because it explains why a good PVC formulation looks different from a 1980s one.

Plasticised PVC food film is roughly a quarter to a third plasticiser by weight. The plasticiser makes it soft and clingy. The traditional choice was DEHA (di(2-ethylhexyl) adipate), and DEHA migrates into fatty foods.

• In the UK, the problem was first reported in 1987. The industry fixed it within a few years by replacing DEHA-only formulations with polymeric plasticisers, which migrate far less.
• A 1990 MAFF survey found the “old-style” PVC wrap was no longer in use in Britain.
• The US moved more slowly. In a 1998 letter to the FDA, Consumers Union reported finding 51-270 ppm DEHA (average 153 ppm) in cheese samples wrapped in PVC film at US supermarkets. That was eleven years after the UK had dealt with the issue.

Today the rules are explicit. EU Regulation 10/2011, which is still in force in the UK as retained law, sets a specific migration limit of 18 mg/kg for DEHA and an overall migration limit of 10 mg/dm². In the US, 21 CFR 178.3740 clears DEHA-plasticised film for fatty food only under refrigerated and frozen storage conditions. (Be careful here: many websites cite 21 CFR 177.1580 for PVC film, but that section covers polycarbonate resins.) Our DEHA vs ATBC plasticiser guide goes through the current limits in detail.

The manufacturer’s takeaway: “PVC cling film” is not one product. Two rolls that look identical can have completely different plasticiser systems. That is why we name the plasticiser on every spec sheet, and why you should ask for it by name.

1998-2004: Saran Goes Polyethylene

In 1998, S.C. Johnson bought Saran Wrap and Dow’s other consumer products. In 2004 it reformulated US Saran Wrap from PVDC to polyethylene, citing concerns about chlorinated materials. PE was also cheaper and easier to process.

The result is well known among cooks: the new Saran Wrap clung noticeably less. The brand lost share, and the name “Saran Wrap” no longer tells you what material is in the box. That is the source of much of today’s confusion between Saran Wrap, cling film and plastic wrap. Our cling wrap vs Saran Wrap vs plastic wrap explainer sorts out the names.

Japan did not follow. Asahi Kasei’s Saran Wrap and Kureha’s Krewrap are still PVDC, which is why a Japanese box and an American box with the same brand name behave so differently.

Regulation Timeline: How the Rules Caught Up

Cling film spread faster than the rules that govern it. Here is the regulatory history most relevant to anyone importing wrap today:

Year	Rule	What it means for cling film
1958	US Food Additives Amendment	Food-contact substances, including plastics and plasticisers, need FDA clearance
1987	UK Materials and Articles in Contact with Food Regulations	UK framework for food-contact materials, adopted the same year as the DEHA findings
2011	EU Regulation 10/2011 (plastics)	Overall migration limit of 10 mg/dm²; SML for DEHA 18 mg/kg; standard food simulants and test conditions
2021	Brexit: 10/2011 retained in UK law	UK importers still need a 10/2011-style declaration of compliance
2030	England: plastic film collection from all households	Deadline moved from 31 March 2027 to 1 April 2030 (announced 16 July 2026)

The last row is the newest chapter. England’s Simpler Recycling rules originally required every council to collect plastic film from homes by March 2027. In July 2026 the government pushed that deadline back to April 2030, after the industry raised concerns about end markets for recycled film. If you sell cling film in the UK, expect questions from retail buyers about recyclability and the resin identification on your packaging well before 2030.

Where Cling Film Is Made Today, and What the History Means for Your Order

The original brands were American, Japanese and Australian. Most bulk food-grade cling film is now extruded in Asia, and a large share of world PVC cling film comes from Chinese plants. Most of those plants cluster around Ningbo, Guangdong and Shandong. We have run PVC and PE lines in Ningbo since 2004. You can see how the film is actually made in our cling film manufacturing process guide.

Each chapter above left a lesson, and each lesson belongs as a line on your purchase order:

History lesson	Year	What to write into your PO or spec sheet
Same brand, different resin	2004	Name the resin: PVC, PE (LDPE/LLDPE), or PVDC. Never just “plastic wrap”
Plasticisers migrate into fatty food	1987	Name the plasticiser system and ask for an EU 10/2011 or FDA migration test report on a fatty-food simulant
Reformulation cut cling	2004	State a cling or tack requirement and the surfaces the film must stick to (glass, PP tray, stainless steel)
Rules change after the product ships	1958-2030	Ask for a declaration of compliance for your destination market and confirm the resin code on the carton
Thin film tears in pro use	Ongoing	Specify gauge: 8-10 µm for household rolls, 10-12 µm for catering, 12-15 µm for meat and bone-in trays

For reference, our current terms for food-grade PVC cling film are FOB Ningbo roughly $1,100-1,700 per tonne, depending on gauge, width and plasticiser system. MOQ is about 5 tonnes or one 20ft container of mixed sizes. Private label runs through our custom OEM cling film service. If your market is moving to PE for recyclability reasons, our PE cling film is made on the same site with the same paperwork.

The Short Version

• 1933: PVDC discovered by accident at Dow. 1949: Saran Wrap is the first household cling wrap.
• 1960: Japan gets Krewrap (PVDC). 1963/1966: Glad Wrap (polyethylene) launches in the US and then Australia.
• UK: not invented there. Cling film became a normal British product in the 1960s-70s, and by 1987 it was common enough for a plasticiser finding to make national news.
• 2004: US Saran Wrap switches to polyethylene. The brand name stops telling you the material.
• Today: buy by specification (resin, plasticiser, gauge, cling, compliance), not by brand or by the word “cling film”.

Need a spec sheet for PVC or PE cling film with the resin, plasticiser, gauge and migration data written out? Contact our export team with your target market and roll size, and we’ll reply with a quote and test reports.