Buying Your First Packaging Machine, From the Other Side of the World.
Written for brands coming off hand-packing or a co-packer, who are also importing capital equipment for the first time. It covers the decision, the specification, the supplier checks, the payment sequence and the shipment — in that order.
On this page
- 01Is a machine the right move yet?
- 02Define the pack before the machine
- 03Choose an automation level you can staff
- 04What the machine needs from your factory
- 05Buying from a Chinese supplier without guessing
- 06Paying for it, and getting it to your floor
- 07Installation, acceptance and the year after
- 08Your first email, and a starter checklist
Is a machine the right move yet?
Most first-time buyers do not arrive from another machine. They arrive from hand-packing, or from a co-packer who has stopped fitting. Those are three different starting points, and they lead to different questions.
You pack by hand
Your constraint is people and hours. Output moves only when you add staff, and quality moves with whoever is on shift that day.
The question to answer first is not which machine — it is which single step consumes the most labour. Filling, sealing and cartoning are often solved by different machines, and buying the wrong one leaves the bottleneck untouched.
You use a co-packer
Your constraints are usually minimum runs, scheduling and margin. You may also be unable to change pack format or run small trials quickly.
Before costing a machine, get clear on what you are actually buying back: control, or unit cost. If it is control, the machine may be justified at a volume that pure cost-per-pack maths would reject.
You have outgrown a small machine
Your constraint is usually changeover, uptime or format range rather than raw speed.
Be specific about what failed. A machine that cannot hold seal quality on a new film is a different problem from one that runs fine but takes half a shift to change over.
What changes on the day packing comes in-house
Buying the machine transfers work to you that someone else was absorbing. This is the part that surprises people, and it is worth accepting deliberately rather than discovering it in month two.
- Labour does not disappear, it changes shape. You trade packers for an operator, plus someone who can clear a fault and change a format without calling for help.
- You now own downtime. A stoppage is your production loss, not a co-packer’s problem.
- You now own film and material specification. Machine performance is tied to material, and cheap film is a common cause of seal problems that get blamed on the machine.
- You now own in-line quality. Fill weight checks, seal integrity, coding accuracy and the records behind them move to your floor.
- You now own maintenance and spares. Wear parts, a small critical spares holding, and a cleaning routine that fits between shifts.
Signals you are ready
- Your pack format and pack sizes are stable, or you can commit to a short list.
- Demand is steady enough that the line runs regularly, not a few days a quarter.
- You can assign at least one person to own the machine.
- You have, or can create, floor space with power, air and access.
- Hand-packing or co-packing is already limiting what you can sell.
Signals to wait
- The pack design is still changing every few months.
- The product itself is not finalised — a formulation change can change the machine.
- Volume is driven by a single customer or contract you have not secured.
- Nobody in the business can be made responsible for the equipment.
- You are buying to hit a cost-per-pack figure you have not yet modelled with real inputs.
Waiting is a legitimate outcome of this chapter. A machine bought against an unstable pack specification usually gets modified, resold or run below its capability.
Define the product and the pack before the machine.
Every serious quotation is built backwards from the finished pack and the behaviour of what goes inside it. If those are vague, the quotation will be vague too — and two vague quotations cannot be compared.
Describe the product by how it behaves, not by what it is called
“Powder” covers materials that meter completely differently. What a machine builder needs is behaviour.
- Free-flowing, sticky, hygroscopic, static-prone, or fibrous? This decides the dosing method more than the product name does.
- Bulk density, and how much it varies between batches or suppliers.
- Particle size and shape, including whether there are fines or oversize pieces.
- Fragility — whether the product can be dropped, augered or vibrated without damage.
- Temperature, moisture and oil content, and whether the product is packed warm.
- Abrasiveness or corrosiveness, which affects contact-part material choice.
- Allergen or hygiene status, which affects cleaning and changeover design.
Then pin the pack
- Format — pillow bag, stand-up pouch, quad seal, stick, sachet, pre-made pouch, tea bag.
- Fill quantity and tolerance, and whether you sell by weight, count or volume.
- Every size in the range, not just the best-seller. Range width drives cost and changeover.
- Film or bag material and structure, including whether it is recyclable or mono-material.
- Features — zipper, valve, spout, euro-slot, tear notch, window, gusset.
- Printing and coding — pre-printed film or plain, plus batch, date and any serialisation.
- Secondary packaging — what the pack goes into, and whether that is in scope.
Write down what you know
- Product name, and its physical behaviour in the terms above.
- Target output, expressed as packs per shift as well as per minute.
- Shifts per day and days per week the line will actually run.
- The pack sizes you sell today and expect to sell in two years.
- Current material supplier and specification, if you have one.
Flag what you do not know
- Unconfirmed film structure — say so rather than guessing a spec.
- Fill tolerance you have never measured.
- Whether a new size is definitely launching, or only under discussion.
- Whether the product formulation is final.
- Whether legal metrology or labelling rules in your market affect the pack.
Unknowns are not a weakness in an enquiry. A supplier who is told which items are unconfirmed can quote around them, or propose a test. A supplier who is given false certainty will quote a machine that matches the wrong picture.
Choose an automation level you can actually staff.
The most common first-purchase mistake is not buying too little automation. It is buying more than the team can run, in a building that was not ready for it.
Semi-automatic
The machine does the hard, repeatable part — dosing and sealing — while an operator loads, positions or removes.
Suits wide format ranges, frequent changeovers, modest volumes, and teams new to equipment. Costs continued labour per pack.
Automatic single machine
One machine forms, fills and seals continuously. An operator supervises, feeds material and handles faults. For roll-film bags, review the vertical form-fill-seal machine and its bag and dosing requirements.
Suits a settled format with steady volume. Requires consistent material supply and someone who can clear faults.
Line with upstream and downstream
Product feeding, dosing, packing, coding, inspection and conveying are integrated and interlocked.
Suits established volume and a maintenance capability. Note that overall uptime is set by the weakest device, not the packer.
Five questions that decide the level
There is no universally correct level. The correct level is the one your site, your team and your run pattern can sustain on an ordinary week — not on the best week. Use the machine directory to compare formats before discussing a configuration.
What the machine will need from your factory.
A packaging machine is not an appliance. Checking these before you order avoids the two classic delays: a machine that cannot physically get into the room, and a machine that cannot be commissioned because a service is missing.
Space and access
- Machine footprint plus working space — operator side, service side, and room to open guards and doors.
- Ceiling height, including any bag former, hopper or platform above the machine.
- The route in. Door widths, corridor turns, lift capacity, floor loading, and whether the crate can be uncrated outside.
- Material flow — where product arrives, where film is stored, where finished packs leave. Crossing flows create contamination and traffic problems.
- Film and bag storage at a stable temperature and humidity.
Services and environment
- Electrical supply — voltage, phases, frequency and available current. State your local supply in the enquiry; it must be built in, not adapted on site.
- Compressed air — pressure and flow, and whether it is dry and oil-free enough for food contact.
- Ambient conditions — humidity affects powders and film; temperature affects sealing.
- Dust, washdown and hygiene requirements, which change the machine’s construction.
- Waste and reject handling — where rejected packs and film scrap go.
Who owns what, before the machine arrives
Scope gaps between supplier and buyer are one of the main reasons a commissioning visit gets wasted. Agree these in writing while you are still comparing quotations, not after the crate lands.
- Offloading and moving the machine into position, including any lifting equipment.
- Final connection to power and air, and who signs off the electrical work.
- Foundations, levelling or platforms, if the machine needs them.
- Extraction, guarding interfaces or local safety requirements specific to your site or market.
- Product and film availability for commissioning — enough real material to run, not a sample bag.
- Operator availability during installation, so training is not delivered to an empty room.
Buying from a Chinese supplier without guessing.
Most packaging machinery in this class is built in China, so for many first-time buyers the real question is not whether to buy from China, but how to tell two Chinese suppliers apart from eight thousand kilometres away. The honest answer is that you cannot judge a factory from a website. You can judge how a supplier answers.
The gap you are trying to close is verification. You are committing money before you can see the machine, in a jurisdiction where enforcement would be impractical for a single line. So the checks below are all designed to be done before payment, and to produce something written.
Six checks to run before you pay anything
What Spack Machine puts in writing
We publish four commitments because they are the four places where enquiries most often go wrong. They are the same commitments we ask you to hold every other supplier to.
- Speeds are stated with conditions. Product, fill weight, bag size and film are given with any rate. A maximum dry-cycle figure is never presented as a production rate.
- You can test fit before you commit. Sample testing with your own product and film is available on request.
- The quotation is itemised. Machine, dosing, feeding, coding, inspection, conveying and output are listed line by line, with exclusions and buyer-supplied items named.
- Limits are stated, not hidden. Where an application does not fit, we say so and point to the route that does.
How to put two proposals side by side
- Normalise the scope first. Add the missing items to the cheaper quotation before comparing totals — the gap often closes or reverses.
- Compare stated output under the same conditions, in packs per shift, not headline rate.
- Compare what happens on a format change: tooling required, time, and who can do it.
- Compare control and component brands against what is serviceable in your country.
- Compare the written warranty terms and what each side pays for during a service visit.
- Compare how each supplier handled your unknowns. Vague questions answered confidently is the warning sign, not a lack of confidence.
None of this removes risk. It converts an unverifiable promise into a written, comparable claim — which is what you need before the payment sequence in the next chapter starts.
Paying for it, and getting it to your floor.
This is the part first-time importers ask about last and worry about most: money leaves before the machine does, and then a large crate has to cross a border you have never shipped across.
How payment is staged
Because these machines are configured to your product and pack, production cannot start until the specification is fixed and a deposit confirms it. What matters for your risk is what sits between the deposit and the balance — and the answer is evidence.
Stage 4 is the one to look at closely, because it is where your money stops being unsecured. On completion we provide a full test record — video and photographs of the machine running — so you can confirm it meets what was agreed. You are also welcome to attend the factory acceptance test in person, or to appoint a third-party inspection company to attend on your behalf if travelling is not practical.
Deposit and balance proportions are set per project and confirmed in the quotation, so they are not published here. The sequence above does not change.
Choosing how the machine travels
The trade term you agree decides one thing above all: where our responsibility ends and yours begins. We can work to whichever term you prefer — including EXW or CIF if you already have a freight forwarder and a customs broker you trust. If you do not, that is the normal position for a first import, and a delivered term is usually the simpler choice.
The forwarder handles the whole journey; you settle duty at cost
Booking and dispatch, export declaration in China, import customs clearance at destination, and final delivery to your address are all handled end to end. Import duties and taxes are then passed through to you at cost, against the actual documents.
Duties and taxes included in one figure
In a number of destinations, import duties and taxes can be included in the delivered price, so you receive the machine against a single quoted amount. Availability depends on the destination country.
Where door-to-door delivery is available
Which of the two options applies, and the exact scope at the delivery end, depend on the destination country and on what you choose. Both are confirmed in writing for your specific project before you commit — including what is not covered.
Budget for these either way
Whether duties sit inside the delivered price or are reimbursed at cost, they are real costs of the project. Build them into your investment case from the beginning rather than meeting them at the border.
- Import duty and import tax or VAT at your destination, based on the correct classification for the machine.
- Customs brokerage and handling at the destination port or terminal.
- Marine or transit insurance for the value of the machine.
- Final-leg delivery to your site, and whether a vehicle can physically reach it.
- Offloading and rigging — a crated packaging machine usually needs a forklift or crane, and this is normally arranged by you at your site.
- Site preparation — power, air and any platform or levelling work.
- Your own labour during commissioning and the learning curve, which is real and is routinely left out of first-time budgets.
Two things to sort out early
- Who is the importer of record. On a delivered term this is usually still your company, and you will need whatever registration your country requires for commercial imports. Check this at enquiry stage, not at the port.
- Documents. Commercial invoice, packing list, bill of lading or air waybill and certificate of origin travel with the shipment. Confirm early what your own customs authority requires for capital equipment, because a missing document is the most common cause of a machine sitting at a terminal.
Installation, acceptance, and the year after it starts running.
A machine is not delivered when it arrives. It is delivered when it runs your product, at your site, with your people operating it.
The project path, end to end
Warranty
- 12 months from the date you receive the machine.
- Within the warranty period, technical support and replacement spare parts are provided free of charge.
- Freight on spare parts is paid by the buyer.
Support after shipment
- Phone, Skype and FaceTime support, together with operator training.
- Most issues are resolved remotely — usually faster than arranging travel.
- Where an on-site visit is needed, service fee, return airfare and accommodation are paid by the buyer.
We state the buyer-paid items plainly because they are the terms most often left unmentioned until they are invoiced. Ask every supplier the same question and compare the answers.
Your first email, and a checklist to gather first.
A good first enquiry is short, concrete and honest about unknowns. It should let a supplier tell you within one reply whether they are a fit.
Copy, replace the highlighted parts, send to any supplier
We are a [type of business] in [country]. We currently pack [by hand / through a co-packer / on a small machine] and are looking at our first automatic packaging line.
Product: [name]. It is [free-flowing / sticky / fragile / hygroscopic], bulk density around [value, if known].
Pack: [format], fill sizes [list every size], film [structure if known, or “not yet decided”], features [zipper / valve / spout / none].
Output: we need about [packs] per [shift or hour], running [hours per day, days per week].
Site: [voltage / phase / frequency], compressed air [available or not], available floor area [dimensions].
Not yet confirmed: [list your unknowns honestly].
Please send an itemised quotation showing what is and is not included, the output you expect with our specific product and film and the conditions behind that figure, and what the machine would not be able to handle. We would also like to understand your sample testing, warranty and after-sales terms, and the delivery options to [country].
Gather these before you send it
Product and pack
- A physical sample of the product, and of the film or bag if you have one.
- Photographs of the pack you want to produce, or of a competitor’s pack.
- Every fill size, with tolerance if you have measured it.
- Your target output in packs per shift.
Site and project
- Electrical supply details and compressed air availability.
- Available floor area, ceiling height and the route into the room.
- Who will operate and maintain the machine.
- Your destination country and delivery address, for shipping options.
- Your realistic timeline, including when you need to be in production.
Send us the pack you need to make.
Tell us the product, the pack format and the sizes. We will tell you which machine route fits, where the limits are, what a quotation would need to cover — and, if it does not fit, we will say so.
