Branding & design

Having packaging made: from quotation to the first pallet

The artwork is finished; it still has to be produced. Quotations, plates, the proof, checking the pallet: the order of the steps, and what costs money to change too late.

Published on 5 June 2026 — Algeria Agency

Approved packaging is not yet packaging. Between the signed-off artwork and the first pallet delivered there is a chain of technical and commercial decisions nobody describes to the client, each of which costs a very different amount depending on when it is taken.

The particular thing about this chain is that it hardens. While nothing has started, everything changes for free. From the moment the plates are made, each modification has a price. And once the machine is running there is no modification at all, only a run to do again.

This article follows the real order: what a converter needs in order to give you comparable quotations, how to read those quotations, what the quantity is actually calculated on, what exactly you are approving on a proof, what is decided on press without you, and what to check when the pallet arrives.

The article that accompanies this one deals with the artwork itself — what reads at a metre, the die line, what disappears in the fold, the barcode — and none of that is repeated here. This one begins where the other stops: the design is good, and it now has to be produced.

You are not ordering a drawing, you are ordering a print run

The change of nature is abrupt and rarely explained. Until sign-off you were buying design work: a single object, editable, whose entire value sits in a file. From the moment you order, you are buying an industrial operation: a machine set up, an operator, a substrate bought by weight, a drying time.

That changes who decides. A designer can answer "let us try something else". A converter answers with a lead time and a price, because every attempt occupies a machine that would be producing something else. This is not obstruction: it is the difference between a file and a workshop.

It changes the nature of a mistake above all. An error in a file is a correction. The same error printed twenty thousand times is stock: it exists, it is paid for, it takes up space, and the only remaining question is whether you use it anyway.

That is why proofreading before the run is not a formality but the highest-return step in the project. An hour spent checking the net weight, the address, the telephone number and the storage statements costs an hour; the same lines wrong cost an entire run.

It changes who you are talking to, finally. Many businesses hand the manufacturing to whoever did the design, which is comfortable and hides something useful: the two trades do not have the same interests. The designer wants it to be right; the converter wants it to be producible. You need both opinions, and separately.

The three calls, and what to give

A packaging quotation only means anything by comparison, and two quotations are only comparable if the converters received exactly the same request. That is almost always where the comparison fails: each answered a slightly different question, and the prices no longer measure the same thing.

The request fits on one page and contains six things: the nature of the product and its weight, the quantity you want, the format or volume, the substrate if you have a view, the number of colours, and the finish. If you do not know which substrate to ask for, say so and ask for a proposal — but ask all three the same thing.

Add two pieces of information buyers forget and that change the price: the date you need it, and whether it will be reordered. A converter prices a one-off order differently from the first run of a series, because in the second case the setup is spread over several passes.

Finally, in the same call, ask for two numbers nobody volunteers: the minimum quantity accepted, and the price of the same thing at twice that quantity. The second is the more instructive; it tells you what share of the invoice is fixed, and therefore how far you can bring the unit cost down by ordering more.

Three converters is enough, and it is better if they are not the same kind: a label printer, a carton maker and a finisher do not see the same product, and one of them will propose something you had not considered. It is the only step in the process where you learn something rather than compare.

Reading a quotation: setup, plates, and the price per thousand

A print quotation has two halves that behave in opposite ways, and the unit price on the front mixes them. The first is fixed: the plates, the cutting die, the machine setup, the sheets lost bringing the colour up. It is owed whether you produce a thousand units or fifty thousand.

The second is proportional: the substrate, the ink, the machine time, the finishing, the palletising. It follows the quantity almost linearly. So the unit price is not a price but a quotient — the fixed part divided by the quantity, plus the variable part — and it falls mechanically as the quantity rises, without anything having become cheaper.

That structure explains two things that surprise people. Doubling the quantity does not double the invoice, often nowhere near. And a short run is not "expensive" in the usual sense: it carries alone the costs a long run spreads, which is a situation rather than an injustice.

So ask for a quotation that separates the two, and politely set aside one that gives only a price per thousand. Without that separation you can neither compare two converters, nor decide a quantity, nor estimate what a modification will cost — and those are the three most expensive decisions in the project.

Read the lines that are not prices as well: the delivery tolerance, the lead time and what it runs from, and who pays the transport. The tolerance deserves particular attention — many converters deliver within an agreed percentage of the quantity ordered and invoice the actual figure, which is ordinary in the trade and always surprises people who discover it on the invoice.

The quantity is calculated on your sales, not on the unit price

The unit price always pushes upwards, and it is a slope to be resisted with a number. The question is not "what does a unit cost at that quantity", but "how many units will I actually get through before this packaging has to change".

That number is published nowhere and does not need to be: it is in your own sales over the last twelve months, reference by reference. It is the only figure that matters here, you already own it, and half an hour in your invoices produces it more reliably than any market average.

Against that number, ask the second question: how long before this packaging has to change? A recipe that evolves, an address that moves, a regulatory statement, a range name, a fourth variant — each makes the remaining stock obsolete. Three years ahead is a bet on three years of stability.

The calculation is then simple and fits in two columns: on one side the per-unit saving from ordering more, on the other the value of the stock you will throw away if something changes. Plenty of businesses have saved a few dinars a unit and thrown away a third of the order eighteen months later.

There is a middle position converters rarely propose themselves: produce a large quantity of neutral substrate and personalise in short runs, where the construction of the product allows it. It moves the fixed part without removing it, and suits a range whose variants change faster than the brand does.

The proof: what exactly you are approving

The proof is the moment responsibility changes sides, and that is more or less all you need to remember about it. Once signed, what comes off the machine is compliant as long as it matches the document you approved — including if that document contained an error nobody saw.

So you need to know what that document shows and what it does not. A file sent by email does not show the colour, because it is displayed on your screen. A proof printed on paper does not show the colour on your actual substrate, which may be brown board or a clear film. Only a trial on the substrate shows the substrate.

Read it with two people and by category rather than end to end: all the numbers first, then all the proper names, then the mandatory statements, then the contact details. You do not see an error in a text you wrote and reread ten times; you see it when you are looking for one thing at a time.

And check that the version sent is the last one. This is not a trade joke: the most frequent and most expensive mistake is not a spelling error, it is a file from an earlier version sent by accident, correct everywhere except on the line you had just corrected.

Colour: your screen does not know it

A screen emits light and an ink absorbs it. These are two different phenomena, and no adjustment reconciles them completely. The colour you approved on a screen is a promise the substrate keeps more or less, depending on whether it is white, brown, glossy or absorbent.

Hence the only method that works: decide the colour on a physical object, never on an image. A swatch book held against the intended substrate, under ordinary light, settles in a minute a discussion that runs to three emails. It is also what makes a colour reproducible from one converter to another, because it then carries a reference rather than an impression.

Then you need to know whether your colour is achieved in four-colour process or as a spot ink. Process rebuilds it from four inks and lets it vary slightly from run to run; a spot colour is an ink mixed in advance, more stable and more expensive, and it is what you choose for a brand colour that occupies large areas.

A pale colour over a large area is the hardest case, and it is often chosen without anybody realising. Variations show there, joins show, and a light flat area reveals every defect in the substrate. A strong colour over a small area forgives a great deal.

Accept in advance, finally, that there will be a difference between two runs a year apart: the substrate is not from the same batch, nor is the ink. What is negotiated is not the absence of a difference but its limit. Keep a signed reference sample and ask that the next run be compared against it, not against a memory.

What is decided on press, without you

Between the proof and the pallet a series of decisions is taken that you will never hear about, made by an operator in seconds because the machine is running. They are normal, they are his trade, and it is useful to know they exist.

Registration is one: the superimposition of the colours drifts by fractions of a millimetre and is corrected continuously. That is why fine text reversed out in white across four colours is a risk, while fine text in a single colour is not. That constraint is settled in the artwork, not on press.

Make-ready is another: the first sheets are used to bring the colour up and go to waste. It is one of the reasons for the fixed part of the quotation, and it is why a serious converter refuses too short a run on too large a machine — he would lose in make-ready most of what he was meant to produce.

What you can do fits in one sentence: ask to be present at the start of the first run, or failing that ask for a photograph of a sheet from the beginning of the run. Thirty minutes on site at the first start is worth more than three exchanges of email after delivery, and the converter gains from it too.

Delivery: checking a pallet that will not be taken back

The delivery arrives wrapped on a pallet, and the habit is to sign. Yet that is the moment of accepting or refusing, and a signature without reservation makes any later dispute difficult — including when the defect was real and invisible under the wrap.

A reasonable check does not mean opening the whole pallet. Take samples from three places — the top, the middle, the bottom of one side — because a manufacturing defect is almost always grouped: it corresponds to a moment in the run, and therefore to a zone of the stack.

On those samples, check four things in this order: that it is the right version of the text, that the colour matches your reference sample, that the cut and the folds fall where they should, and that it assembles without forcing. The fourth is the one people forget and the one that costs the most, because it only shows when you actually fold a box.

Count as well, or at least check the number of cartons declared against the number delivered. The quantity tolerance is contractual and normal; a difference outside that tolerance is not, and it stops being noticeable once the pallet has been broken down at the back of a warehouse.

If there is a problem, write it up the same day, with photographs and the number of units affected. A converter almost always settles a defect reported on the day of delivery; the same defect reported three weeks later becomes a discussion about what may have happened to the stock in the meantime.

Storage: what damages packaging before it is used

Printed packaging is a fragile product for the whole time it waits, and most stock losses have nothing to do with the printing. Damp warps board and changes its dimensions to the point where it no longer runs properly through a packing machine.

Crushing is the second cause: too high a stack marks the units at the bottom, and one pallet placed on another turns a whole order into waste without anything showing from outside. The converter states a stacking height; that is an instruction, not decoration.

Light fades, slowly, and pale colours and certain reds first. A year of stock kept near a window will no longer match your reference sample, and you will wrongly conclude that the converter did a poor job on the second run.

The practical rule is short: dry, flat, under the stated height, out of direct sun, and used in the order it arrived. That last condition is the one no warehouse observes on its own, and it is what makes an old batch turn up at the back two years after a statement changed.

The day a line of text changes

That day always comes: a telephone number, an address, a weight, a regulatory statement, a modified logo. The question then becomes economic rather than graphic — how much stock is left, what the modification costs, and from when the new version is obligatory.

The cost of a modification is not proportional to its importance. Changing a word that appears in a single colour may require one plate out of four; moving an element by three millimetres may require four. Always ask the cost before deciding on the modification, because it often steers the choice of what gets modified.

Hence a practice that saves a lot: group the modifications. Keep a list of the corrections you want, apply them all at the next run rather than one at a time, and only trigger an unscheduled run for what is obligatory or wrong.

Keep a version register too, however brief: one line per run, with the date, the quantity, the converter and what changed. It earns its place twice — knowing which batch is in the warehouse when a question comes up, and starting from the right version in two years, when nobody remembers which one was last.

Finally, decide explicitly what happens to the old stock. Use it up, use it on one channel only, or destroy it: all three are defensible depending on what changed, and the absence of a decision always produces the same thing, six months of shelf where both versions sit side by side.

Changing converter: what belongs to you

People change converter over a price, over a lead time, or because something went wrong. The useful question beforehand is simple: what do I take with me, and what stays with him?

Your design files belong to you, provided you have them. Ask for them in their original format and not only as a print file, and do it while the relationship is good — it is an ordinary request at that point and an awkward one after a disagreement.

The plates and the cutting die are a different case and often misunderstood: they were invoiced on your quotation, but they are physically at the converter and mounted for his machines. A new converter will generally make new ones, which means that fixed cost is paid a second time. Count it in the comparison before concluding that the other is cheaper.

What really travels is more modest and more important: the die line used, the colour references, the exact substrate with its weight, and a physical sample of the last run. With those four a new converter can match what you had; without them he restarts the project, and the result will be different without anybody having decided it.

What we do, and what we refuse

What we do is bounded. We prepare the production files from the die line your converter supplies, we write the request for quotation so the answers are comparable, we read the proof with you, and we keep the version register.

We are not converters and we take no commission on printing. That has a consequence we would rather state: we have no interest in your ordering more, and the opinion we give on quantity is the one your sales history justifies, not the one that inflates an invoice.

We refuse to sign a proof on your behalf. The signature commits the business on statements it is responsible for — the weight, the composition, the contact details, the origin — and a supplier who signs those lines for you does you a disservice, because he removes the reading that would have found the error.

We also refuse to promise colour identity between two runs, because nobody can promise it. What we do instead is checkable: a written colour reference, a reference sample kept and signed, and a comparison made at the next delivery. And there is work you can do without us — print the artwork at full size, assemble it, stand it on a shelf and step back a metre — which we recommend doing before you even call us.

Frequently asked questions

How many units should we order for a first packaging run?

The number does not come from the quotation but from your sales: how many units of this reference did you actually get through in twelve months? Order what you will use before the next foreseeable change — an address, a recipe, a statement, one more variant. The unit price always falls as the quantity rises, and that fall is worth nothing if you throw the rest away in eighteen months.

Why does the unit price fall so much when we double the quantity?

Because a quotation contains a fixed part and a proportional one. The plates, the cutting die, the setup and the sheets lost in make-ready are owed whatever the quantity; the substrate, the ink and the machine time follow it. So the unit price is a quotient, and it falls mechanically without anything having become cheaper. Ask for a quotation that separates the two.

Can colour be approved on a file sent by email?

No. A screen emits light, an ink absorbs it, and your substrate intervenes on top of that — brown board will never give what a screen gives. Decide the colour on a swatch book held against the intended substrate, under ordinary light, and record the reference. That is what makes the colour reproducible from run to run and from converter to converter.

The delivery contains slightly more than the quantity ordered. Is that normal?

Yes, within a limit stated on the quotation. Many converters deliver within an agreed percentage and invoice the actual figure, because a run does not stop to the exact unit. What is not normal is a difference outside that tolerance — hence the value of checking the number of cartons at delivery, while the pallet is still built.

A statement has changed and we still have stock. What do we do?

Decide explicitly, and write the decision down: use it up, use it on one channel only, or destroy it. All three are defensible depending on what changed and on whether the new version is obligatory or merely desirable. What is not defensible is the absence of a decision, which always produces six months of shelf where both versions coexist and nobody knows which is the right one.

Our converter keeps our plates. Is that normal?

Yes: they were invoiced to you, but they are physical objects mounted for his machines and they are of no use elsewhere. A new converter will make new ones, so that fixed cost is paid a second time — count it before concluding a competitor is cheaper. What really needs recovering is elsewhere: the original files, the die line, the colour references and a sample of the last run.

Where we come in

Twelve months of sales decide the quantity. They do not tell you which of your three manufacturers can actually hold the finish you have drawn.

We call all three and write down what each of them refuses to produce.
We set the quotes side by side, plates, make-ready and spoilage included.
We attend the start-up make-ready whenever the works are in Algeria.
We check the first pallet against the proof you signed yourself.

A line selling under a thousand units a year does not change its packaging: the production minimum eats the gain before the second pallet.

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