A plastic box factory quotes 1.35 yuan against 1.60. Is the cheap one real?

Answer: Ask for wall thickness and regrind ratio. A 1.5 mm wall with thirty percent regrind explains the gap.

How is a 3000 piece MOQ priced across two colours?

Answer: By colour, with 600 yuan and cleaning time per change. Two runs of 1500 carry a 15% premium.

Who pays for the screen frame?

Answer: The buyer on the first order, frame kept at the plant. If the buyer owns it, repeat orders carry no fee.

From which date does the plastic box factory count 14 days?

Answer: From artwork and colour approval. A day lost there is a day lost in printing.

Which machine matters most in an audit?

Answer: The masterbatch scale. Without plus or minus 1%, two batches of one colour drift apart.

Plastic Box Factory: Quotes, MOQ and Lead Times

Quick answer: On small boxes a plastic box factory hides about 12% of the price in masterbatch, colour-change cleaning, screen frames and inner bags. Quote in six lines, negotiate MOQ by colour rather than by total, and split lead time into five dated nodes.

Where a Plastic Box Factory Hides Cost
Multi-Cavity Tooling and Sample Charges
Colour, Printing and Packing Rates
Small-Lot MOQ and Production Windows
Auditing the Line and Agreeing Sampling
FAQ

1. Where a Plastic Box Factory Hides Cost

Small boxes carry low unit prices, so quotations arrive as one number plus a note about tax and freight. Ask the plastic box factory to break out resin, moulding, tooling, printing, packing and freight, and a 180×120×45 mm box becomes comparable.

Resin follows net weight: a 1.8 mm wall gives 92 g, which is 0.79 yuan at 8,600 yuan per tonne and 0.83 yuan with 5% sprue loss, or 48% of the piece price. A quote of 1.35 yuan against 1.60 usually means a 1.5 mm wall or thirty percent regrind.

Cost line	Basis	Share	Check
Resin	Net weight price	48%	Virgin grade
Moulding	Rate × cycle ÷ cavities	21%	Cavities, cycle
Tooling	Tool ÷ first order	6%	Recovery stop
Printing	Frame + piece rate	9%	Ownership
Packing	Bag, carton, label	11%	Per carton
Freight	Volume or weight	5%	Unloading

Four items slip through: masterbatch by the kilogram, cleaning per colour change, frames per side, bags per piece. Together they reach 12% of the price, so name them in the quote.

2. Multi-Cavity Tooling and Sample Charges

Small boxes live by cavity count. An eight-cavity P20 tool at 48,000 yuan is 16 yuan per box across a 3000 piece order, and 0.02 yuan over a 300,000 shot life that yields 2.4 million boxes. Ask which basis the price uses; the swing is about 15%.

Plastic box factory: two white cases stacked on a shelf, upper lid ajar showing black dividers and clear boxes, white handles on the front

Samples come as a 3D print in three days for 800 yuan, proving fit but not shrinkage, or a sample tool in six days for 2,800 yuan, credited against production tooling. Cavities must match the press: eight on a 180 t machine at 32 seconds gives 900 boxes an hour.

First order	Tooling per piece	Effect
1000 pcs	48 yuan	+32%
3000 pcs	16 yuan	Baseline
30000 pcs	1.6 yuan	−9%

3. Colour, Printing and Packing Rates

Colour is a separate line. Masterbatch runs at 2% with a 25 kg minimum, enough for 1.25 tonnes of resin, and a colour change costs forty minutes of cleaning plus 600 yuan. One or two colours absorb it; a five-colour mix has to be quoted on its own.

Printing is charged per side: 350 yuan for the frame, 0.12 yuan a box, 0.10 more for a second side, 0.35 upward for hot stamping. Packing is forgotten: bags of 50 at 0.06 yuan each, cartons of 200 measuring 585×385×395 mm and weighing 18.4 kg, 8000 boxes per pallet at 35 yuan.

4. Small-Lot MOQ and Production Windows

MOQ counts by colour, not by total. Three thousand in one colour, two thousand each in two colours and five thousand across five colours are three prices, because every change costs forty minutes plus a first-article check that a short run cannot absorb.

Plastic box factory: black cases stacked on wrapped pallets, a red stack beside them, blue station signs on a yellow floor line

Windows matter as much. A 180 t tool change takes 2.5 hours, so plants batch them on the 5th and 20th; miss one and you wait half a month. A 3000 piece order takes 3.4 hours of press time, yet printing and packing queues turn 14 days into 20: confirmation 2, material 3, moulding 5, printing 2, packing 2, plus 25 for a new tool.

5. Auditing the Line and Agreeing Sampling

Check four things on site: cavity count against the nameplate, masterbatch scale accuracy within plus or minus 1%, tunnel temperature logged at 60 °C for eight minutes, and check-weighing at packing. If any of it lives in handwriting, batch consistency is a hope.

Sampling needs numbers: AQL 1.5 for appearance and AQL 4.0 for function, 125 boxes from a 3000 piece lot, Ac 5 / Re 6. A cross-hatch test may lose no more than 5% of print, and a 1.2 m six-face drop must leave the body uncracked. A plastic box factory that resists these figures is telling you something.

Conclusion

On small boxes the money sits in six cost lines and four hidden adders, and nothing is comparable until they are separated. Negotiate MOQ by colour, fix how tooling recovers, and split delivery into dated nodes before trusting a plastic box factory.

This article discusses only the container (case body) side of specifications and design intent, and does not cover any handling, loading or use of the contents.