Not sure if you need a contract packager? Can’t decide if your packaging project is too big or too small to outsource? Here are some tips to help you decide.
Do You Need a Contract Packager?
You should talk to a contract packager when…
- Your packaging volume under or over employs your own packaging lines, either short or long term.
- There’s a specific, short-term requirement that may be better served by specific packaging experience or equipment you don’t have.
- There’s a short run for a new product test, gift pack and so forth which may otherwise require the investment in new equipment.
- Promoting your product with increasingly popular marketing weapons of nonstandard packaging or promotional inserts requires special machinery or labor intensive work.
- The pressure of new business or deadlines creates a heavy, short-term workload for which you require experienced help to supplement the efforts of in-house staff.
- A product may more economically be shipped in bulk to a distant market, then unit packed locally.
- New packaging forms unfamiliar to your staff and equipment may be specified.
- There is no available in-house equipment or expertise for a particular job.
- The plant is closing for maintenance or faced with a labor availability problem.
- There’s a warehouse full of a product that needs reworking to make it salable.
- A new package form is to be market tested before general introduction.
- The company is faced with a high investment to meet regulatory and environmental compliance.
However, there may be times when it may be premature to talk to a contract packager. For example, when…
- The need is unclear or at least not clearly stated.
- The problem can be more effectively and efficiently addressed using other methods.
- You think the contract packager can salvage a project that you suspect is no longer salvageable.
- The company is not organizationally or financially prepared to implement the contract packager’s suggestions.
