MOQ or minimum order quantity is often quoted by packaging manufacturers to ensure that they are not producing lots of inefficient small orders. Much of the cost of packaging can be due to set up (also called make-ready), tooling and shipping charges so once these costs are factored in, small orders start to look expensive. Due to this expectation, manufacturers often make the assumption that the unit cost will be too high, so they quote an MOQ to avoid the difficult question of price.

At Pactivate, We understand that budget is important. Often when you launch a new product, you want to test your product packaging in the market place before spending lots of money that might go to waste. For this reason, we don’t have a minimum order quantity and can produce one or a few copies.

Bespoke packaging, sometimes call custom packaging is where the design is created specifically for the brand or product owner. The benefits of bespoke packaging are that it can be designed in a way and budget which is suitable for the customer. Off the shelf, standard packaging can often be porrly fitting and wasteful. It can also be less appealing for the consumer.

Packaging is often categorized by either the material type or the product type as this often determines the manufacturing method. Cardboard packaging is usually grouped into Corrugated Cartons (transit packaging and retail or point of sale), Folding boxboard (e.g. cereal boxes) Rigid or luxury gift boxes (including perfume and jewellery boxes). Plastic packaging can be loosely divided into, films and flexibles e.g crisp packets or shrink films and rigid plastics including tubes, jars and containers. Tins, jars, bottles, wooden boxes and cardboard tubes are all examples of common packaging types.

Most kinds of packaging require an element of tooling, set up or make ready cost (the charge to cover time taken to set up machinery) then often materials come with a minimum order charge. There is also design time, plates/stereos, and a whole range of other costs to consider before one copy is made. Depending on the packaging type and processes required, it is quite easy to notch up £1000 before you’ve even manufactured anything. In this case, you’d need several thousand pieces to cover the base costs before you can get to £1 per unit. It’s worth considering whether unit cost or total cost is more important for your project. Buying 10k pieces to get your unit price down and then throwing half of them away, is not a great use of resource (both financially or environmentally) – sometimes it’s worth considering the wider impact and the element of risk within these initial calculations.