Updated October 2026. Originally published July 2016.
Packaging Materials | Shipping Protection | Food Packaging | Warehousing
Updated October 2026. Originally published June 2020.
Supply Chain Services/ Contract Packaging | Contract Packaging
Halloween is on the shelves and holiday programs are running. It is the easiest time of year to lose track of Q1, and it is exactly when Q1 gets decided. Valentine's Day 2027 is Sunday, February 14. Easter 2027 is Sunday, March 28. That is 42 days apart. If your copacker is planning those two programs as separate projects, they are going to compete with each other for the same line time, the same materials, and the same people. This is not an article about choosing a copacker. It is a readiness checklist for brands that already have one and want to confirm, before the end of 2026, that their partner is actually preparing for Q1.
Contract Packaging | Kitting & Assembly
Kitting is no longer a niche add-on service buried in a copacker's capabilities deck. As Packaging World noted in "Kitting Moves Beyond Hidden-Market Status," kit packaging is becoming an essential service of contract packagers in meeting CPG companies' need to push time-sensitive products to market. Variety packs, promotional bundles, club-store configurations, and seasonal programs are driving a volume of assembly work that most primary production lines cannot absorb without compromising throughput on core SKUs.
Most copackers will tell you they can handle everything. The ones running at 95% utilization in June will still say yes in the RFP. You find out what that actually means in October, when your promotional program is sitting in a queue and your retail window is closing. The question is not whether your copacker has capacity on paper. The question is whether they have built their operation to serve both short-run flexibility and sustained high-volume output, at the same time, without sacrificing one for the other.
