Are you planning to begin a carton box manufacturing business? If that is the case, you will profit a lot from this business as many industries use packaging boxes. Packaging has become an important part of a business’s success. Most brands are looking for trustworthy and best-box manufacturing firms. Do you want to become a reliable carton box manufacturing company? If that is so, this post will provide you with all the information you will need to begin your business. The box manufacturing business is very profitable globally, with the rise in the e-commerce sector, the scope of this business has increased even more.
1. No big requirements to start a carton box manufacturing business
Carton boxes are the top packaging solution; the people involved in the business are required to manufacture a wide range of product boxes. The boxes are required in different sizes and shapes and must meet the demands of the big market. You don’t have to be qualified because this profession does not demand any high educational background.
Anyway, you need the right planning and should also have money to invest. Networking skills are necessary so that your business becomes successful. The B2B business needs you to produce a large number of boxes. This is a vital requirement because you might get big orders from brands.
2. Steps to start a carton box manufacturing business
Carton boxes are used in a wide range of applications and are a product that is forever in high demand. More than 80 percent of industrial packaging is made of corrugated boxes because corrugated boxes have the benefits of successful buffering, easy production, lightweight, easy disposal, easy storage, no need for bundling, printing advertising, must be exported to the market, and easy to recycle.
Boxes come in different shapes and sizes, generally rectangular and square. The carton is made of corrugated cardboard, with 7-layer, 5-layer, 3-layer, and other specifications. The business involves buying corrugated cardboard from marketplaces or manufacturers and turning them into custom-made boxes according to the customer’s specific requirements.
Corrugated boxes are perfect for packaging in different fields such as glassware, beer, medicines, cigarettes, milk, biscuits, dairy products, cosmetic tea, soap, coffee, and tea, food, chemical industry, food, clothing industry, leather, agrochemical industry, and so on.
Here are the key steps to successfully start a carton box manufacturing business:
1) Market potential
The thriving e-commerce industry is considered a big buyer of carton boxes. Generally, the corrugated box industry is a necessary part of the manufacturing sector. Quick industrialization especially in thriving countries such as the following: India, Brazil, and China are guessed to increase trade activities in the area. In the global market, the Asia Pacific country demands the highest share. Over the next few years, the demand for the corrugated boxes market is guessed to fuel the growth of these sectors.
The following are the big segments where the carton boxes are used:
· Personal and household care goods
· Electronic goods
· Footwear
· Chemicals
· Automobile components
· Tobacco products
· Beverage and food products
· Glassware and ceramics
· Household appliances
· Paper products
· Textile goods
· Rubber & rubber products
2) License and permission for carton box-making
If you want to begin a cardboard box-making business, there are many regulations and rules you have to follow. There is a need for a trade license, and that is helpful for pollution control too. There are insurance and permits too, but it is a much excellent choice if you register the firm as a limited liable one.
If you pick a business that can represent the core morals and values in the right way, it will mark your mark among customers. If you are producing boxes for the beverage and food industry, you will have to be even more alert as people’s lives are directly linked with it. Always keep in mind the FDA regulations will work in your favor.
3) Equipment and machinery for the carton box manufacturing business
Having the machinery and equipment for the carton box manufacturing business is necessary, but first of all, you need a covered area. For a small-scale production, you will need to have an area covering at least 2000 square feet. The machinery will depend on what type of boxes you are planning to produce. The most frequent machinery that you may need will be a sheet cutter, board cutter, and pressing and pasting machines. If you provide the best quality custom cardboard boxes, only then will the brand come for repeat purchases. Pressing and stitching machines will also be helpful when it comes to manufacturing different boxes.
4) Raw materials for carton box manufacturing
If you want to begin your carton box manufacturing business, you will need lots of good standard raw materials. Kraft paper, wax, glue, inks, and corn starch will be helpful for all these objectives. There are different kinds of box printing that you can avail, and if your business is a little scale going with a cost-effective option will be okay. Offset flexography, lithography, screen, and digital printing are accessible options for box manufacturers.
5) Profit margin
The profit margin of traditional carton packaging boxes is around five percent of turnaround. Anyway, it can be increased by offering creative designs and better quality boxes.
6) Quality control
With the sheer amount of customization and design options accessible at your fingertips, there might be many questions about protection. Carton boxes are subject to stress and impact during shipping, packaging, and storage, so there needs to be ways to test your custom packaging strength.
Some standard tests contain the Flat Crush, Edge Crush, and Burst Test.
The edge crush test is one of the important tests for corrugated cardboard. As the name implies, force is used perpendicular to the edge of the corrugated box until it buckles. The results ensure the durability and strength required to stack resistance and heavy loads.
Flat Crush test is also used and is the same as the Edge Crush Test. Force is used directly on the surface area of the corrugated cardboard until the flute patterns and compromises its structure. This test equally determines the stacking resistance and compression of the corrugated cardboard needed to carry heavy loads.
Molten test is a standard industry measure that checks the durability of the corrugated cardboard surface by determining the force required to puncture the board.
All of these tests ensure the standard of custom corrugated packaging so your items have the highest level of safety they need to reach their end destination.
7) Marketing
You should buy high-standard raw materials. Ensure that the quality of your product is extremely high. Try to contact firms that need corrugated boxes for packaging. You can focus on industries such as food processing, pharmaceuticals, e-commerce, and others, as we have already mentioned above.
Don’t miss out on attending business fairs and trade shows focused on the packaging and paper industry. You should also read publications related to the industry to keep yourself up to date with what is happening outside and inside the packaging industry.
3. Challenges in the carton box manufacturing business and how to solve it
Let’s take a closer look at these five challenges and what they mean to you as a box producer.
1) Custom-made boxes
From the latest Samsung phone to your Friday cheat meal, we buy everything and anything we need online.
Because of our limitless purchasing of products, corrugated board and carton box manufacturers have been forced to immediately adapt to producing custom-tailored boxes with varied sizes, shapes, and formats to meet our requirements.
This explains why the demand for custom-tailored carton boxes is one of the huge challenges that packaging manufacturers cannot escape.
Straight-line, 6-corners, 4-corners, beer cases, crash-lock boxes, Amazon envelopes, and sleeves are just some key examples of the many box formats that are immediately growing in demand.
And post-covid, online shopping is changing shopping at physical stores. Studies show that this trend is becoming normal and definitely never change, so it has become a status quo in the industry that all corrugated board and carton box producers have to immediately adapt to.
2) Last minute orders
One of the hardest challenges for carton box packaging producers is managing last-minute orders. These orders that generally arrive at the end of the day and need to be managed first thing in the morning and the next are not forever easy to handle. And even for these kinds of requests, your requirements are the same: top provide quality products that meet the customers’ needs.
To manage this type of order successfully, you need a top-performance production machine, to go quicker, but also to decrease the number of staff on the production line to better productivity.
High operating speeds and short set-up times are true requirements for carton box packaging producers.
3) Single orders
Some products are produced regularly and repeatedly. For others, they are one-off, small production runs, for example for special events, New Year’s Eve and Christmas, specific commercial offers, requiring frequent production changes on the line. It is then hard to justify an investment in top-performance equipment for these seasonal orders, which does not appear to be a profitable or advantageous solution.
4) Small series
Many cardboard box manufacturers are incredibly offering their customers the choice of placing orders without minimum quantities like 1 box, 2000 boxes, or 40,000 boxes. For your customers, it is vital today to have the possibility to order only the quantity of products they want.
Little series means having an even quicker production capacity and being capable of changing production extremely fast.
5) Low cost of production and productivity improvement
Low production costs and top productivity can go hand in hand. To get this, it is vital to optimize production. This can be achieved by reducing non-value-added operations, increasing machine utilization, reducing the number of staff working on a shift, or moving to automation on the production line.
The production tools automation, totally or partially, provides many benefits. Generally, automation results in an increase in the profitability and productivity of the firm and saves time.
4. Carton box manufacturing business FAQs
1) How much area is required for a carton box manufacturing business?
A minimum of 5,000 sqft area is needed for starting a semi-automatic plant, and a minimum of 30,000 sqft area is needed for starting an automatic plant. The requirements of the area can be replaced according to the production capacity.
2) What is the process of making corrugated cardboard?
The process of making a carton box is easy:
- Wood chips are pulped via the kraft process, or you can also buy pulp from the market.
- The kraft roll is added into a corrugator machine, which cuts the board into wide blocks as per the needed size.
- Then the end cutting, gluing, and printing on the boxes.
3) What is the cost consideration for carton boxes?
Definitely, you don’t want to reject the bottom line when designing your carton boxes.
Most of the time, custom boxes cost less than you actually think. But that is forever the case. You will want to weigh the cost of the material and production efficiency. And sometimes, it pays to spend a little more.
Consider whether you want to use digital printing or offset printing. Offset printing is generally considered the go-to choice for wholesale and bulk custom packaging, but it is not right for every company’s needs.
Your choice might be pretty more costly, but if it is in your budget, it may be value the splurge. It provides a higher-end look since you have more options with colors and graphics.
5. End words
It is vital to note that the demand for carton boxes is extremely high and this is a growth area in the packaging industry. Anyway, this business needs a lot of capital to get started because of the high machinery cost, which is a fixed cost for this business. The business is also extremely competitive as there are lots of players in the market.
We advise that you learn the business before you enter the industry because the business atmosphere in the packaging industry is extremely competitive.
