paczoneboxes

Many companies order custom packaging boxes wholesale to pack their new products such as candies, wrist watches, gift items, CD/DVD's and other electronic gadgets, etc. This article is aimed to guide you through the vast options when requesting your custom plastic boxes.

Types of Plastic Gift Boxes

Plastic cases generally are available in either die cut sheet plastic folding boxes or injection molded rigid plastic boxes. Injection molded boxes may not be so convenient to use for custom purposes as new mold or tooling is required for every single size and such molds to make custom sizes and shapes are quite expensive. The decoration of rigid plastic boxes are more limited but still possible. They can’t be printed as sheet using lithoprinting technique, but by pad/silkscreen printing instead. And a large part of our discussion will be on plastic sheet-converted folding PVC/PET boxes as such plastic boxes made of flat sheets are relatively easier to decorate.

The most common sheet plastics used are polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Both of these two materials can be extruded to form boxes with tuck tabs or pre-welded by ultrasonic. Ultrasonic pre-welded boxes are shipped to the customer assembled (therefore, they would cost much more in shipping). Tuck tab boxes are usually shipped flat and then can be easily assembled by the customer on arrival. Both types of plastic sheets come in a variety of thickness' from 16 gauge up to as high as 75 gauge. The most popular ones may be gauge 30 and gauge 55, totally up to your specific needs. PVC folding boxes have been around longer and much more popular than PET as the former is much cheaper. But now we realized that PVC film is not good for health and thus more and more sheet plastic gift boxes use PET instead. Both materials come in a wide variety of stock color tints and natural clear.

Decoration of custom plastic boxes

Silk screening is the most popular technique that can be used both on plastic sheets and flat surfaces of molded rigid plastic boxes (as long as the materials have very flat, non porous surfaces). With modern screening techniques, a wide variety of half tones and graduated screens printing can be accomplished at reasonable prices. Products with complex printing from small lot orders lend themselves to silk screening.

Lithoprinting can be processed on lighter gauges of sheet materials in larger quantities (so rigid plastic boxes is not this category). Image quality can be as good as those on coated paper stock.

Pad Printing. Don’t worry that rigid plastic boxes with irregular surface can’t be printed. Pad printing is also a quite established techniques and it provides a perfect solution for printing rigid plastic boxes of whatever shapes and surfaces.

Hot Foil Stamping. This is the process of transferring a color (usually metallic silver or gold foil) clung to a roll of plastic on to the expected surface by use of a heated metallic die. The premade metal die is mounted to a stamping press. The colored foil on the roll will then be transferred to the material in the shape prescribed on the die. Often-times you may want to combine several methods of decoration, such as printing and stamping and others such as bow-tie, ribbons and so on.

Hopefully this article has shed a little light on ordering custom-made plastic boxes for promotional marketing purpose. This may be a quite complex process but don't feel overwhelmed, just leave it to the professional manufacturers and they will help you through!