In beverage packaging, what you don’t know can quietly drain your margins. One of the most common—and costly—mistakes happens when the wrong substrate or carton spec is chosen for a product’s actual life cycle and production environment.
The impact isn’t always immediate. At first, the cartons look fine, and the unit cost might even seem competitive. But once they hit your co-packer’s automated line, inefficiencies begin to add up—slower run speeds, more jams, increased labor intervention. Before you know it, you’re absorbing operational costs that far exceed what you thought you were saving on the packaging itself.
Where the Upcharge Comes From
When a carton is poorly specified—wrong substrate, incorrect cut crease, mismatched caliper—it slows the entire filling and packaging process. Automated equipment is designed for precise, repeatable carton behavior:
- Opening force must be in the right range for the machine to erect the carton without jamming.
- Score bend ratios have to be calibrated so that each panel operates as intended.
- Coefficient of friction (COF) can’t be too slick (cartons shift out of alignment) or too rough (cartons bind in the rails).
If those specs are off, line speed drops, jams increase, and labor costs climb. The co-packer could pass that inefficiency back to you—sometimes in the form of surcharges which will impact your bottom line.
The SBS Trap
One of the most common culprits is SBS paperboard. On paper, it’s a premium material: smooth, white, and visually pristine. But it lacks wet strength sizing agents, meaning it softens and can even delaminate in high moisture environments such as refrigerated or cold-chain environments.
For many smaller brands, SBS is the default choice because a commercial printer-turned-carton-supplier says, “Sure, we can run that.” What they don’t say is that the material will underperform in your actual supply chain, and you and your co-packer will be the one dealing with the fallout.
Why “Yes” Isn’t Always the Right Answer
Plenty of vendors will agree to whatever the customer requests just to win the job. Either they don’t know the operational implications, or they do and choose not to share them.
That’s not how Zumbiel operates. I don’t see my job as just a sales leader –
I’ve seen a lot during my career. I’ve learned lessons from mistakes – many of them my own (I’ve been doing this for 35+ years now). My job is to keep clients out of trouble, even if it means telling them no.
By probing into the intended use case, equipment setup, and shelf-life requirements, Zumbiel engineers cartons that run right the first time—protecting both your brand reputation and your margins.
The Economy of Scale Risk
Customizing a carton spec to fit nonstandard equipment might solve an immediate problem but can kill your economies of scale. A glue flap moved by half an inch could take you out of a shared die program, forcing you into costly, one-off tooling and production runs.
Zumbiel’s philosophy is simple: design for efficiency, not just for the short-term “yes.”
The Takeaway
That co-packer surcharge I mentioned isn’t an arbitrary fee—it’s the real cost of upstream decisions made without the right expertise. Before you approve your next carton spec, ask:
- Does my substrate match my product’s life cycle?
- Will it run flawlessly on my co-packer’s equipment?
- Am I introducing custom specs that limit my scale?
Because in packaging, the wrong carton doesn’t just cost you pennies per unit. It could cost you speed, reliability, and even hard cash—thousands at a time.
