Article
Good packaging on a small budget
Where a few thousand euros of packaging money does the most work, from board weight to the number of inks.
Ana Pires
Packaging
May 1, 2026
The smallest packaging budget we worked with this year was €6,400, for design and the first print run together. That is less than many brands spend on a single photo shoot.
It was enough. A small budget forces the decisions a bigger one lets you put off, and the packs that come out of it are often the clearer ones.
Where the money actually goes
Before anyone draws anything, we price a pack line by line with the printer. On a run of 5,000 units, the cost of each one splits roughly like this.
Cost | Share of a unit | Where to save |
|---|---|---|
Structure and cutting die | 31% | Use a stock shape |
Board | 24% | Drop to 300 gsm |
Inks | 22% | Two spots, not CMYK |
Finishes | 15% | One finish, or none |
Hand assembly | 8% | Skip the inserts |
The first two rows are where small budgets go wrong. A custom cutting die can cost €900 before a single box is printed, and most brands at this size don’t need one.
Spend on one thing
The packs that work on a tight budget pick one place to be generous and keep everything else plain.
One ink that does the job
Rumo makes freeze-dried meals for long hikes. We kept the silver foil pouch the food needs and printed one circle with a number on it, the day of the trail. Each pack takes a single ink, chosen by the time of day you eat it.
Check the white
On foil or kraft, a light ink disappears unless there’s a white printed underneath it. Ask for the white on the quote, because the printer counts it as a second colour.
A stock box, a custom colour
FOME is a delivery kitchen with five menus and no dining room. Every menu goes out in the same stock kraft boxes and bags, and only the printed band changes, so the kitchen packs by colour and the riders check by colour.
“At the agency we’d spend half the budget on a structure nobody remembered. I’d rather buy a stock box, choose one perfect colour and print the name big enough to read from the counter.”
Duarte Neves, Co-founder at Okapi
Ask the printer before the designer
Most of the savings come from one call with the printer in the first week, before anything is final. These are the questions we bring to it.
Which box sizes do you already have dies for?
Where is the next price break above 3,000 units?
Can two products share one printed sheet?
When can we see a wet proof on the real board?
The third question saved Barro a whole print run. Their fourteen labels fit across two sheets, so a new product means a new tint on a layout the printer already has.
Start with one pack, not the range
If the budget is tight, design the bestseller first and print it in the smallest run the printer will take. Live with it on a real shelf for a month before the rest of the range follows.
You’ll learn more from those first thousand units than from any mock-up. If you’re planning a first run, start a project with us and bring the printer’s last quote.
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