Sourcing packaging from China, landed in the US.

What it takes to start a run

There is no single minimum order quantity, because the number follows the setup your job needs: a cutting die for the structure, printing plates for each colour, foil and embossing dies, and makeready sheets before the first good one comes off the press. Those costs are paid once, whichever quantity you order.

Indicative starting points, not quotes: custom labels from around 1,000 units, printed paper bags from around 1,000 units, rigid gift boxes from around 3,000 units, and folding cartons quoted to your specification. The full MOQ guide works through why.

Each additional finish — hot foil, embossing, spot UV, soft-touch lamination — carries its own setup and its own minimum, so a heavily finished box sits well above a single-colour carton. Ask for tiered pricing and you will see exactly where your cost breakpoints fall.

Nothing ships in volume before you have held it

Producing a sample takes one to two weeks. Express courier to the United States takes a further two to five days — DHL Express is our default, with FedEx and UPS both strong on US lanes. Allow roughly two to three weeks end to end, and tell us if a launch or a pitch date makes that tight.

Courier on a sample shipment is commonly fifty to one hundred US dollars depending on service and destination. For serious, qualified enquiries we will often cover or share it. The sample itself is produced and priced individually and does not reflect production unit cost. See how samples ship and clear customs.

Air for approval, sea for the run

Samples move by air, always — a brand director waiting on final colour or foil placement cannot spend six weeks finding out the finish is wrong. Once the specification is signed off, production moves by sea, where unit freight cost across a container matters far more than a few days of transit.

As a rule of thumb, shipments over 150 to 200 kilograms with no hard deadline favour sea. Embossed and foil-stamped surfaces travel better in a full container than consolidated with other shippers’ cargo, so the FCL and LCL decision is a quality decision as well as a cost one. We work sea versus air through in full.

What the paperwork has to say

Every shipment carries a commercial or proforma invoice describing the contents, quantity, declared value, HS tariff code and Incoterms. The invoice has to match what is physically in the carton: under-declaring to reduce duty risks delay, penalty and seizure, and over-declaring simply costs you tax you did not owe.

What you will actually pay at the US border depends on how your goods classify and on rates that change. We will not quote you a duty percentage. Take your HS code to a licensed customs broker, confirm the current rate including any additional tariffs that apply to the classification, and build that into your landed cost before you commit to a run.

Proofing across eleven thousand kilometres

Colour is where remote sourcing most often goes wrong, because a screen in Portland and a press in Jiangsu do not agree about anything until someone writes the tolerance down. Send Pantone references rather than screenshots, name coated or uncoated, and put an acceptable Delta-E in the specification.

Then hold us to a physical proof before bulk, to the Pantone tolerances you set. Printing runs on a Koenig & Bauer Rapida 106 with in-house foiling, embossing and lamination, so the pass that carries your colour and the pass that carries your finish happen under one roof and one standard.

Send a specification and we will send a price

Dimensions, quantity, finishes and the date it needs to land. We hold ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015, ISO 45001:2018 and China’s Ten-Ring environmental label — tell us what documentation your compliance team needs and we will confirm what we can supply before you order, not after. Browse the materials and what we make, then start an enquiry.