Contract Packing Guides– archive –

We can box and assemble sets, quoted per order rather than from the rate card. The thing to work out first is that our minimum counts filled bags, so a set of three is three bags and 500 bags is 167 sets.

We apply labels at USD 0.15 per position and a back label counts as a second position. What we need from you, how a barcode gets onto a pack, and why a label beats printed film until the wording stops changing.

We hold no organic, halal or vegan certification. That is a fact worth knowing before you plan a product around one of those claims, and the question to put to your own certifier is more specific than most brands realise.

Leaf takes up four or five times the space of a powder at the same weight, weighs less accurately, and sells through a window. What that means for the bag, the fill weight and the first order.

A flat fill rate makes small sample formats unusually workable, but the quantity and the lead time catch people out. Sachet sizes with prices, how many to take, and why the Japanese calendar decides your booking date.

A stick pack is the one format our equipment cannot run. The sachets and small pouches that do the same job, what each costs per piece, and why a flat fill rate makes very small formats expensive per gram.

Twelve steps from first idea to finished cartons, with who does each one, how long it takes and what it costs. Worked backwards from a launch date, including the two approvals that stop more first shipments than anything else.

Almost always it is not rudeness and not a rejection. It is an enquiry that cannot be priced as written. What goes wrong, what difficult really means, how long to wait, and the rewrite that usually fixes it.

Japanese contract packers are hard to find in English, rarely list prices, and answer literal questions literally. How to search, what to send in a first email, and the questions that separate a real fit from a wasted month.

Salt pickled cherry blossom is wet, and we are a dry goods line, so we cannot fill it. Dried petals and sakura powder we can. Plus the narrowest seasonal window of any ingredient we handle, and why it fights your sales calendar.

Rice flour is the only ingredient we fill where the bag comes out smaller than people expect. What that saves, why 500 bags is more material than it sounds, and who answers the gluten free question.

Dried shiitake is the opposite problem from a powder. The product sells itself through the bag, the pieces are bulky, and bag volume rather than weight decides the format. What that means for a 500 bag order.

We hand finished cartons over inside Japan and we do not arrange export freight. What that means for your forwarder, your Incoterm, your insurance and your timing, and the things worth having in place before the run finishes.

The honest comparison, including the cases we lose. Freight on finished goods versus bulk, what a local co-packer will ask you for, and the volume at which packing close to your own market starts to win.

A tagged mesh filter at USD 0.25 a piece is one of the few items genuinely hard to buy in small quantities. The catch is that our minimum counts filled filters, so 500 is twenty five retail cartons, not five hundred products.

Roasting already did the thing that makes matcha awkward to pack, so hojicha can go in a clear bag at half the price. What that saves, what the roast still costs you, and how leaf differs from powder on a filling line.

A private label matcha product has two suppliers behind it, and most overseas brands email the wrong one first. What a tea producer decides, what a packing line decides, and the order to approach them in.

Bagging a product in Kyoto is a fact about the packing. It is not the same as the product being Japanese. Why repacking does not move origin, and who to ask for the answer your label actually needs.

Roasted soybean flour is fine, light and bulky for its weight, which changes the bag before it changes anything else. Formats, material needed for 500 bags, the soy declaration, and the one shape we cannot run.

Green yuzu through the summer, yellow yuzu from November with December the peak. Why a yuzu project is planned forwards from the harvest, what 500 bags needs, and why a yellow yuzu launch is really a spring launch.

The difference between a contract manufacturer and a fill and seal line, the full list of steps we do not offer, and how to tell which one your project actually needs.

Who is the importer of record, what has to be marked on every carton, why the dispatch notice matters more than the paperwork, and the mistakes that leave a pallet sitting in Kyoto.

New Year, the early May holidays and mid August take weeks out of a Japanese production calendar, and only one of the three closes the banks and the brokers too. How a four week lead time becomes six, and how to plan around it.

Month end closing with payment at the end of the following month, how a Japanese quotation reads, why the decision is slow but final, and what to put in a first message so you get a priced answer back.

The stock bags we fill from, priced per piece in USD: aluminium barrier, metallised kraft, clear film and tea filters, which material suits which product, and when supplying your own bags is the better call.

What it costs to have matcha weighed and sealed into retail bags in Japan, the 500 bag minimum, worked examples in USD at three sizes, and the two things that rule a project out.

Why a Japanese contract packer counts bags when it sets a minimum, how a flat per bag rate changes your format decisions, and three ways to reach the count without buying more material.