Sourcing custom packaging and print from China

Packaging is the category where the tax arrives with the goods

Packaging looks like a simple thing to import, and the manufacturing usually is. What makes it complicated is that packaging is regulated as waste and as tax at the same time, and both obligations land on the business that places it on the UK market.

So the sourcing decision is not only about price per thousand. It is about material choice, recycled content and weight, all of which change what you pay after the goods land.

Two regimes, and they are not the same thing

Packaging producer responsibility makes businesses that place packaging on the UK market responsible for the cost of dealing with it as waste, with data reporting obligations attached. What you report is driven by the material and the weight of what you place on the market, which is why accurate weights per component matter from the start.

Plastic packaging tax is separate. It applies to plastic packaging components that do not contain at least the required proportion of recycled plastic, with a threshold on the amount of plastic packaging you manufacture or import in a twelve-month period.

The useful thing to understand is that these two ask different questions of the same box. One is about who pays to deal with it later; the other is about what it is made from now. A packaging decision that improves one can worsen the other, so it is worth looking at both before choosing a material.

Recycled content is a sourcing specification, not a claim

If you are relying on recycled content, it has to be evidenced rather than asserted. Ask for the recycled content by weight for each component, ask how it is verified, and ask for the supporting documentation.

This is an area where supplier claims outrun supplier evidence more often than in most categories. A statement in an email is not the same as a document you can produce if asked, and the obligation to have the evidence sits with you.

Specify recycled content as a numerical requirement with a test or certification route, and require notification of any change. A change in resin source can move you across a threshold without anybody mentioning it.

Not all your packaging counts the same way

Transport packaging that arrives on an import is treated differently from the packaging your customer receives. That distinction matters when you work out what falls into which regime, and it is a common source of both over-reporting and under-reporting.

Map your packaging properly: what goes around the product for retail, what is added for ecommerce despatch, what protects it in the container, and what is genuinely reused. Then get weights per component for each. This is dull work that takes an afternoon and prevents a year of guessing.

Quality points that matter in practice

Specify material, grade and weight, board flute and grammage for cartons, print process and colour to a physical standard, and finish. Then specify performance rather than just construction: burst strength, edge crush, drop test performance for the way it will actually be shipped.

Print and colour consistency between runs is the most common complaint in printed packaging, so specify the acceptable variation and require a match to an approved printed sample rather than to a screen.

Specify dimensional tolerance carefully. Packaging that is a couple of millimetres out will still fit the product but may not fit the machine that packs it, or the carton that carries it.

Freight, because packaging is mostly air

Packaging is a low-density product and part-container sea freight is charged on volume or weight, whichever is greater. Flat-packed and nested formats, and getting more units into the same cube, matter more here than in almost any category.

Which makes a genuine question worth asking: does this need to come from China at all? For simple, bulky, low-value packaging the freight can erase the unit price advantage, and a UK or nearer-Europe supplier may land cheaper. For printed, specialised, rigid or complex packaging the Chinese price advantage often survives the freight comfortably.

Work it out on landed cost per unit rather than on the quotation, and be willing to conclude that some of your packaging should be bought closer to home.