Zinc oxide hot melt adhesive, 100% high-GSM cotton and an in-house coating process — plus a production team that supports brands from their very first print run
Every boxing tape order starts with the same promise: that the roll will hold when it matters. That promise is either kept or broken long before the tape reaches a gym. It is decided in the mill, on the coating line, and in the quality check that happens before anything is packed into a carton.
This is a look inside how we manufacture boxing tape at ActiveX — what we put into it, what we are certified for, and how we work with brands at every stage from a first sample to a recurring retail programme.
A manufacturer, not a middleman
ActiveX is a sports tape manufacturer with its own production facility, not a trading desk that forwards your order elsewhere. Our factory and research and development base are in Jiaxing, our sales and operations headquarters are in Shanghai, and we maintain a sales office in Singapore. Production runs across five lines, with the coating, edge treatment and printing stages handled inside our own process.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. When a supplier outsources most of the production chain, your specification travels through several hands before it comes back as a sample. Each hand is a place where a detail can shift — the adhesive weight, the edge finish, the shade of a printed colour. When you work with the factory, changes are a conversation with the people running the line.
What owning production gives you as a buyer:
- Lead times you can plan a launch around. Standard orders run 20–25 days; custom orders run 30–40 days from artwork approval.
- A single point of accountability. If a batch is wrong, there is one party responsible — not a chain of suppliers pointing at each other.
- Direct access to specification decisions. Widths, edge style, adhesive coating and colour are production decisions, so you discuss them with production.
Documentation your buyer will actually verify
Compliance is where a low quotation most often turns into an unsellable order. If you resell boxing tape into Europe, the UK, Australia or North America, your own customers will eventually ask you for paperwork. Here is what we hold:
- ISO 13485 — the quality management standard for medical devices and related products
- CE marking — for placing product on the European market
- FDA registration — for the United States, where facilities register and products are listed
- A material safety test report covering non-toxicity and skin compatibility
- An MSDS (material safety data sheet) for transport and handling
We supply these as documents with visible certificate numbers and issuing bodies, so your compliance team or your buyer can check them rather than take them on trust. If you are preparing a first order for a market with specific requirements, tell us the destination market up front and we will confirm which documents apply before you commit to a production run.
What actually goes into the tape
The differences between a tape that performs and one that fails are not visible on a product page. They live in three decisions: the adhesive, the cloth, and the coating.
Zinc oxide hot melt adhesive
Our boxing tape is built on a zinc oxide hot melt adhesive system. We keep the adhesive weight generous, because a tape that is under-coated will lift at the edge during a hard round no matter how good the cloth is. The bond is designed to hold through sweat, friction and repeated hand movement — and to release cleanly when the wrap comes off, without leaving a sticky residue on the skin.
100% cotton, high GSM
We use 100% cotton at a high fabric weight, and we have not moved away from it as cheaper alternatives have appeared. The reason is practical: high-GSM cotton grips without slipping, resists tearing at the edge, and keeps its density through the whole roll rather than thinning out toward the end. It is denser and more abrasion-resistant than the lighter substrates used in low-cost tape, which is exactly what a gym or a fight programme is paying for.
Breathable coating — or full coverage, your choice
The coating is where our own process shows. Our standard construction uses an in-house breathable coating: the adhesive weight stays high enough for a strong hold, while the coating still lets the skin breathe under the wrap. For applications where maximum tack matters more than airflow, we offer a full-coat adhesive option instead. Both are produced on our own lines, so the choice is a specification decision rather than a different supplier.
Edge finish follows the same logic. Serrated edges let a coach tear the tape by hand without scissors; a straight edge is available where a cleaner line is preferred.
Custom manufacturing: from one print run to a full retail programme
Customisation is not an add-on service for us — it is a normal part of how the factory runs. Our custom programme covers four layers, and you can take any combination of them.
Branding on the tape itself. Logo printing is available in single-colour, two-colour and multi-colour versions, and it can cover a small repeat mark or a full-surface design. Because the number of colours drives the printing setup, the first thing we will ask you is how many colours your artwork uses — and if you have a design, send it over, as it usually shortens the quotation considerably.
Printed paper cores. Printing on the inner core is one of the lowest-threshold ways to put your brand into a customer’s hands. The plate is charged once, and then retained in our warehouse: every reorder reuses it at no additional plate cost.
Retail packaging. We produce small retail boxes, mid-boxes packed at 12 or 24 rolls, and printed master cartons. Packaging is priced against your design and dimensions, so it is quoted per project rather than from a fixed list.
Colour. White, black and skin tone cover most of the market, and blue, yellow, red, pink, green, purple and army green are available as alternatives. Coloured serrated edges start at a lower quantity than a full print programme, which makes them a useful first step for a new brand.
Widths span 5 mm to 75 mm, with 25 mm, 38 mm and 50 mm the most common for boxing and hand wrapping, and lengths of 10 m and 13.7 m covering metric and imperial markets.
How to enter the programme. Standard solid-colour tape starts at 288 rolls. Within the custom programme, the lowest entry points are a printed paper core and a coloured serrated edge — both quoted from a small number of cartons — while a full printed run starts at 2,000 rolls for 2.5 cm × 10 m and 1,440 rolls for 2.5 cm × 13.7 m.
A team that answers, and a supply chain that ships
A factory is only as useful as the people who answer your emails. Orders stall in the gap between a question and a reply, so we keep a dedicated sales and operations team handling communication from the first enquiry to the final shipment — the same people who coordinate with production.
What that looks like in practice:
- Specification confirmation before production, so width, edge, adhesive, colour and branding are agreed in writing rather than assumed
- Artwork guidance, including feedback on what will reproduce well on tape fabric and what will not
- Sample coordination — we provide three sample rolls free of charge, with freight covered by the buyer, so you can test the tape before committing to a run
- Export documentation prepared for your destination market
- One-stop shipping, so packing, documentation and dispatch are handled as a single process instead of being split across vendors
Built for small brands starting out
Most factories are set up for volume, and a new brand with a first-year forecast does not fit neatly into that. We deliberately keep the entry points low, because the brands that start small are the ones that grow — and we would rather grow with them than turn them away.
If you are launching a boxing tape line for the first time, the practical route is usually this: order a standard solid-colour run to confirm the specification and get product moving, use a printed paper core or a coloured serrated edge to put your brand on it at a manageable first order, and scale into full printed runs once your sell-through is proven. We will tell you honestly which stage makes sense for your volume, including when it is too early for a full print programme.
Ready to talk specifications?
Send your requirements to mani@activextape.com — your target market, tape width and length, colour direction, branding scope and expected volume. We will come back with a quotation, a sample plan and a production timeline.
ActiveX manufactures sports tape in its own facility, supplying cotton boxing tape, athletic tape, rayon rigid strapping tape and finger tape to brands, distributors and combat sports programmes worldwide.
- Custom boxing tape and private label: OEM / ODM services
- Cotton athletic and boxing tape: cotton tape range
- Rayon rigid strapping tape: rayon rigid tape
- Finger tape for boxing and BJJ: finger tape
- More about the company: about ActiveX
- Full product range: all products
- Wholesale enquiry channel: our Alibaba.com store
Email mani@activextape.com to start.
