Sometimes, clients wonder if we can do smaller runs than 5,000 bags, or have other questions about costs. We don't typically go lower than 5,000 bags for a run because it's just not cost effective to do so. The difference in cost between 5,000 pouch bags and even 7,500 is actually quite a lot and we have found that 5,000 bags is pretty much the lower limit that a business requires for a suitable product for our flexible food packaging in any case. That said, compared to purchasing the same number of plastic bags and cardboard boxes, the cost for 5,000 of our bags is actually pretty cheap. It's just that the larger the run, the more cost effective it gets, so the cost for 5,000 of our bags may seem expensive to us when it actually still ends up being cheap for clients.

Another way to save on small order runs involves printing. Flexographic printing is the cheapest (think newspapers) but we use rotogravure printing because this works much better on laminated plastic and makes better, brighter colors and graphics (think high end magazines). Digital printing is most expensive but there is a way to use it and still cut costs for companies with more than one similar product.

Many of our clients with multiple products opt for a combination of master and digital printing. This involves rotogravure printing of a “master bag” that includes general information that can be applied to various products and digital printing of labels for a specific product. So, instead of digitally printing 10,000 bags for each of say three products, they save money by printing 30,000 master bags, and then 10,000 digital labels for each of the three products. Those labels are then put onto the master bags.

To learn more about our creative food packaging solutions, please see this and our other videos.