Importing packaging from China: boxes, cartons, printing

Packaging protects the goods, carries the brand, and faces the same regulation as the product it holds. Yet it rarely gets a brief of its own. Many importers order it at the end of a project, from whichever factory is closest to hand, and discover the flaws when unboxing: dull colours, warped boxes, glue that gives way, a smell of solvents. These flaws are solved upstream, with written specifications.

Each family is described by its own parameters. Corrugated board is specified by its flute, its weight and its crush resistance. A folding carton is specified by the weight of its board, its coating or its lamination. A bag is specified by its material, its thickness, its handles. Write these parameters down before asking for a price, or every factory will quote a different object.

Packaging factories are specialised. A corrugated board maker owns a corrugator, the large machine that produces the fluted board, and makes shipping cases and mailer boxes. A carton printer owns offset presses, die-cutters and gluing machines. A film converter makes soft pouches and bags. Rigid, fabric-covered boxes go through labour-intensive workshops. Asking a corrugated board factory for a folding carton, or the reverse, gets you a rough, unreliable quote.

The industry is concentrated in southern and eastern China, particularly in Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu. Many printers subcontract die-cutting, lamination or finishing to nearby workshops: ask who makes each step, and where. On platforms like Alibaba or 1688, many packaging listings come from traders, not factories. The Canton Fair, which our team attends every session, is also a place to compare several packaging makers side by side.

Printing is negotiated with files, not with adjectives. Supply a vectorised technical drawing, with cut lines and bleed, and colours in CMYK or spot inks, referenced for example against the Pantone colour chart. Demand a proof to validate the layout, then a pre-production sample printed on the actual machine and signed off by both sides. That sample becomes the colour reference for the whole run.

The same flaws recur through a production run: misaligned registration, colour drifting from one batch to the next, coating that scuffs, lamination that peels, a crease that cracks, insufficient bonding, a smell of solvents. Every extra finish, hot foil stamping, embossing, spot varnish, adds a step and often a subcontractor. A pre-shipment inspection, using an AQL level set in advance, checks colour, assembly and smell on the actual production, not on pieces picked out for you.

If the packaging touches food, it falls under Regulation (EC) No 1935/2004: the material must not release constituents in a dangerous quantity, or change the composition, taste, smell or appearance of the food. For plastics, Regulation (EU) No 10/2011 sets a list of authorised substances and migration limits. For paper and board, there are no harmonised rules at EU level: Article 6 of the regulation leaves each member state to apply its own provisions, such as the recommendations from Germany's BfR.

Inks follow the same logic: no harmonised EU rule, and the Swiss Ordinance (RS 817.023.21) is often cited as a reference for its lists of substances. A Chinese factory works to the GB 4806 series for its domestic market: compliant with China does not mean compliant with the EU. Demand a named and dated declaration of compliance for every layer, body, coating and inks included, then have it confirmed by migration tests at an independent laboratory, on samples from your production.

The price of custom packaging depends less on the material than on the setup. Every format requires a machine setting, every extra colour an ink, every shape a die or an engraved cylinder. That is why special formats carry high minimum order quantities, while common formats can be ordered in smaller batches. Ask for the tooling cost to be quoted separately from the unit price: this investment does not repeat from one order to the next, but it ties your design to one factory.

Packaging weighs little and takes up volume. By sea, a shipment of packaging hits the container's volume limit before its weight limit, and freight is then priced by the cubic metre. Ship the cartons flat when the technique allows it, and size the master box to the product, not to habit. Delivered with the product, packaging also enters its customs value. Finally, plan ahead for the calendar: printing workshops get saturated in the weeks before Chinese New Year.

Empty or full, packaging placed on the European market triggers obligations. In France, the importer is treated as a producer under the extended producer responsibility schemes: they register with an accredited compliance scheme, declare the tonnage of packaging placed on the market, and pay the corresponding eco-fees. The French sorting label also applies to packaging aimed at households.

Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste adds a further layer, most of which applies from August 2026: packaging recyclability, harmonised labelling, recycled content for plastics. If you claim certified paper, demand an FSC chain of custody and exact marking. These documents should be requested at the quote stage: a factory that can neither supply nor name them disqualifies itself.

Sorva is a sourcing and brokerage house. From Guangzhou, our Chinese-speaking team asks printers the questions missing from most quotes: who makes each step, which inks and glues, which documents for food contact, which proof of colour. We build these requirements into the brief, compare packaging makers, in particular at the Canton Fair which we attend every session, and follow the pre-production run through to the signed sample. Where your file requires it, our regulatory compliance review and pre-shipment inspection complete the setup.

In most cases you pay no fees: you open a file with us, we negotiate the goods on your behalf, and we take a commission on their ex-factory value.