Coloured plastic carrier bags in red, green, blue and yellow

Market note, 31 August 2026. Regulatory position as understood at the time of writing; confirm current status before committing capital.

Two things are true at once here, and people routinely confuse them. In force: Lagos State has banned single-use plastics since 1 July 2025, including nylon bags below 40 microns, with penalties up to 250,000 naira or three months’ imprisonment. That is law, in the largest market in the country. Proposed and contested: NESREA’s National Environmental (Plastic Waste Control) Regulations would prohibit certain plastic film bags below 80 microns nationally. The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria has objected, arguing the rules would render existing investment obsolete, and asked for implementation to be suspended pending a regulatory impact assessment. NESREA has defended the regulation, stressing phased compliance. That argument is not concluded. Anyone telling you confidently how it ends is guessing.

What 80 microns would do to the arithmetic

Take the same 30cm by 45cm shopping bag. At 30 microns it weighs 7.7 grams, and a tonne of resin gives about 130,000 bags. At the Lagos minimum of 40 microns it weighs 10.3 grams and a tonne gives about 97,000. At 80 microns it weighs 20.5 grams and a tonne gives roughly 48,700. So a national 80 micron floor would mean twice the resin per bag compared with the Lagos minimum. Material cost per bag doubles. There is a second effect that catches people. Your extruder is rated in kilograms per hour, not bags per hour. Doubling film thickness at the same output halves the number of bags leaving your factory in a shift. A line sized against 40 micron volumes would produce half the bag count at 80.

How to buy machinery into that

Do not specify a line against today’s legal minimum. Specify it against the thicker end of what might be required, and confirm the machine holds its gauge there rather than merely reaching it. A line that runs beautifully at 40 microns and becomes unstable at 80 has a policy risk built into it. Then size for the output you would need if bag counts halved. Screw diameter and lay-flat width are the two decisions you cannot revisit without buying another machine, and going one size up at purchase is small against the cost of being under capacity in a market that has moved.

The part unlikely to be reversed

Lost in the argument about thickness is the producer obligation. The proposed regulations bring Extended Producer Responsibility, reporting, traceability and contribution to recovery infrastructure. Recycled content mandates in the same regulations, 25 per cent recycled PET from 1 January 2028 rising to 50 per cent from 2030, apply to PET rather than film, but they signal the framework being built. A factory that can document what it produces, what it recovers and what recycled content it uses will find compliance a paperwork exercise. One that cannot will find it a penalty. That capability is far cheaper to establish while you are small.

Specifying an extrusion line? We settle what the machine must do across the range of thicknesses you might be required to run, before money moves. Get in touch.