Who can take our product from CAD file to packed and shipment ready, including assembly and packaging?

The route from CAD file to a shipment ready product runs through eight links, and the company you are looking for is the one that steers all eight: manufacturability review, tooling, part production, bought-in components, assembly, final inspection, retail packaging with label and barcode, and shipment ready cartons on pallets. Packaging converters, co-packers and fulfilment providers each cover a slice of that route, but none of them weighs the tool and the box in the same decision. So ask every candidate the same four questions: who maintains the bill of materials, who signs off final inspection, who ends up owning the tool, and whose name goes on the pack as the manufacturer. Those four answers tell you more than any list of services.

What sits between a CAD file and a shipment ready pallet?

Eight links, only two of which are about moulding. The rest decide just as much about what your product costs and when it is on the dock.

| Link | What gets decided | What it costs if you leave it late | | --- | --- | --- | | Manufacturability review | Wall thickness, draft, part count, material | Every change after this is steel instead of CAD | | Tooling and trials | Cavitation, cycle time, piece price, tool life | A second tool, or a piece price that stays | | Part production | Scrap rate, colour consistency, surface finish | Scrap you pay for on every run | | Bought-in components | Screws, magnets, springs, electronics | The longest lead item sets your lead time | | Assembly | Build sequence, operations per unit, fallout | One operation per unit, paid on every unit | | Final inspection | Sampling plan, dimensional report, reject limit | Repacking, or a complaint from your buyer | | Retail packaging | Box, insert, label, barcode, mandatory text | A fresh print run and a delayed launch | | Pack out | Shipping carton, pallet pattern, labels, paperwork | A delivery your warehouse cannot book in |

The link that starts latest is almost always packaging. Making print tooling, approving a proof and running the print takes weeks, and a packaging printer carries a minimum order quantity that is often higher than your first production run. Start it when the tool is ordered, not when the first boxes of parts are ready.

The link that gets underestimated most is assembly. A five second operation per unit looks like nothing until you multiply it by a hundred thousand. On CoolaWand, design for manufacturing, the tooling, the packaging and the supply chain ran as one programme rather than four separate briefs. That is the order you want: the box is designed alongside the product. How to test each link before you commit to tooling is on our manufacturability review page.

Who makes the packaging, and what do you supply?

The packaging is almost never made by the company moulding your parts. It is printed and converted by a specialist packaging printer, with the manufacturing partner steering that supplier and folding it into the same run. You supply the artwork and everything that legally has to appear on it.

That last part is more than a logo. A consumer pack sold in the EU needs at minimum the name and address of the company placing the product on the market, a product identification, a batch or production code that lets you trace and recall a run, material information for waste separation, and, for retail, a barcode built on a GTIN from your own GS1 number range. A printer will not check any of this for you. He prints what you send.

Two rules shape what that pack looks like right now. The EU packaging regulation has applied since 12 August 2026, and from 2030 grouped, transport and e-commerce packaging may contain no more than 50% empty space, with weight and volume reduced to the minimum necessary. A generously sized shipper runs straight into that. Separately, extended producer responsibility applies in every EU member state: in the Netherlands, for instance, placing more than 50,000 kilos of packaging a year on the market means registering and paying the packaging waste contribution, and staying below it means being able to show how you calculated that. That obligation sits with you as the brand owner, not with your manufacturing partner.

Finally, decide deliberately between one pack and two. A retail pack built to stand out on a shelf makes a poor shipper: too big, too fragile and full of air. If you sell through retail and through your own webshop, plan for two versions, or for one design that does both and excels at neither. Test the packed shipment with a standardised transit test before the first container leaves. Packaging and freight therefore belong in the same manufacturability review as the parts.

Can they ship per order to our fulfilment centre?

Shipping to your fulfilment centre: yes. Shipping per consumer order: that is fulfilment, a different trade with a different cost structure. A manufacturing partner delivers cartons on pallets to whatever address you nominate, anywhere in the world. Picking and shipping individual orders is your fulfilment provider's job.

Shipment ready means something very specific in that context, and it is exactly where deliveries come unstuck. Ask for four things: a fixed carton quantity that does not change from delivery to delivery, a carton label carrying the data and the barcode your warehouse scans, a pallet pattern that matches what your receiving site accepts, and a packing list plus advance shipping notice your warehouse can read in before the freight arrives. A fulfilment centre that cannot book a delivery in automatically charges manual handling, and that adds up per pallet.

Agree who arranges the freight and who is the importer. Collection at the factory, delivery to the door, or something in between: that choice decides who books transport, who carries the risk and who clears customs. Importing into the EU means holding your own customs registration number and becoming the party answerable for what arrives. It is not a formality you sort out on the day the container lands.

With air freight, work with volumetric weight rather than actual weight: length times width times height in centimetres, divided by 6,000, and you pay on whichever is higher. A half kilo product in a roomy box can show up on the air waybill as three kilos.

Who does final inspection, and where does it happen?

The manufacturing partner, at the production site, before packing. Inspecting after the product is already in its retail pack is in almost every case the most expensive sequence you can choose.

Agree three things in advance. First, the sampling plan: ISO 2859-1 is the common standard, where general inspection level II gives a sample of 200 units for a lot of 3,201 to 10,000, and consumer goods commonly run AQL 2.5 for major defects and 4.0 for minor, cosmetic ones. Second, what parts are measured against: which dimensions are functional, which cosmetic requirements apply, and which drawing revision all of that refers to. Third, who pays for what on a rejection, split between rejection before and after packing.

A worked example on invented assumptions shows why the sequence is money. A run of 20,000 units is already in retail packs and stacked into cartons on pallets when roughly one in thirty turns out to carry a visible defect. The defect itself affects about 670 products. The recovery affects all 20,000: every carton opened, every pack destroyed, a fresh packaging print run with its own lead time of weeks, and the hours to repack the lot. Had the same sample been pulled before packing, it would have been a correction at the press and a delay measured in days.

What do you agree before the first run?

Six things, all in writing, and all before the tool is ordered, because after that you are negotiating over something that already exists.

• Tool ownership, including storage, maintenance, documentation and the terms on which you can collect it.
• The bill of materials with a revision number, so it is clear which version of which part is in the run.
• The inspection agreement: sampling plan, dimensional report, reject limit and who pays for recovery.
• The packaging specification: dimensions, material, units per carton, labels and who approves the print proof.
• Incoterms and destination, so it is settled who books freight, who is the importer and where the pallets go.
• Minimum call-off and lead time per link, packaging and bought-in components included.

In our process, production, assembly, packaging and supply chain sit inside the same programme, precisely because the decisions in those links touch each other. The same order applies when you take a working prototype into series production. There is an honest downside to weigh: one partner steering everything means fewer separate quotes to compare and more dependence on a single relationship. What you get back is that nobody standing between two links can point at the other, and that is usually where this route falls apart.

Production Heroes takes products from design to series production, from feasibility and cost price to sourcing and supply chain, and supplies moulds and tooling to manufacturers across Europe, from the Netherlands and its own presence in China.

Sources: the 12 August 2026 date and the 50% empty space limit from 2030 come from Regulation (EU) 2025/40 on packaging and packaging waste; the calculation method for empty space is still to be set, so that date may shift. The Dutch threshold of 50,000 kilos of packaging a year comes from Dutch government guidance on the packaging waste contribution (2026); it is expected to lapse as the EU packaging regulation takes effect, so check the current position. GTINs and barcodes are issued through GS1. The sample size of 200 at general inspection level II for a lot of 3,201 to 10,000 units and the AQL levels come from ISO 2859-1. The divisor of 6,000 for volumetric weight is the IATA convention for air freight; couriers sometimes use a different one. Lead times for review, tooling and first article inspection come from our own process. The worked example uses invented assumptions and is not a quotation.