Pricing
12 Cost Lines You Must Not Miss When Preparing a Packaging Quote
Hidden costs often forgotten in packaging quotes: waste, tooling, setup, palletising, freight, storage, financing and more — a complete checklist.
Most packaging quotes count material and printing correctly, then forget everything else. Yet the lines that quietly eat your margin are exactly those "forgotten" ones: waste, financing, palletising… This article gives you the 12 cost lines you must not miss, as a checklist.
- Cost lines fall into three groups: variable, one-off and hidden (invisible).
- The most-forgotten are waste, machine make-ready waste, financing and storage cost.
- Failing to reflect hidden lines quietly drops a 25% margin to 15%.
12 cost lines: the checklist
| # | Line | Group |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Raw material (area × grammage × price) | Variable |
| 2 | Waste / scrap | Variable |
| 3 | Printing (ink + labour) | Variable |
| 4 | Operator labour | Variable |
| 5 | Energy | Variable |
| 6 | Palletising + packing material | Variable |
| 7 | Freight / logistics | Variable |
| 8 | Cutting die | One-off |
| 9 | Printing plates | One-off |
| 10 | Machine setup / make-ready waste | One-off |
| 11 | Design + samples (die-line, proofs) | One-off |
| 12 | Financing + storage (credit terms, stock) | Hidden |
Variable lines (1-7)
Costs repeated on every box. Material and waste are the biggest share; find the calculation step by step in how to calculate carton box cost. Freight can be larger than expected on bulky but light boxes — especially for export.
One-off lines (8-11)
Tooling, plates, setup and design are independent of order quantity; they divide across the total. Why they make the first order expensive is detailed in tooling and plate cost.
Hidden lines (12)
Financing (late collection on credit sales), storage and administrative overhead drop off the quote because they're "invisible." Yet on a 60-day-term sale, financing cost can reach 2-4% of the unit price.
Quick self-audit
- Did you add waste as a multiplier?
5-10% waste should be added on top of material cost.
- Did you divide one-off costs across quantity?
Don't bake tooling/plates into the unit price; amortise them.
- Did you count logistics and palletising?
Are pallets, shrink-wrap, packing labour and freight included?
- Financing and a validity period?
Reflect the cost of credit terms; put a validity date on the quote (raw material volatility).
Checking these 12 lines one by one on every quote removes most of the "why am I not making a profit" question. For the holistic calculation, return to the packaging pricing guide.
Quotes that miss no line
PackPrice computes all 12 lines automatically, so hidden costs don't eat your margin.
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