If your product involves plastic bottles and plastic bottle closures, you might be looking for the best blow molding company to produce them for you. It’s important to find a blow molding company that you can trust, as flaws in your plastic containers don’t just harm the reputation of the blow molding company that produced them; to your clients, they are a reflection of your product and company. To help you to this end, we’ve put together a list of things to look for in a blow molding company:
Three Tips for Finding the Best Plastic Bottle Manufacturer
- Make Customer Service Priority Numero Uno
Your blow molding needs are as unique as a snow flake. When you are determining your packaging requirements and challenges to design a plastic bottle that meets your needs while also being cost effective, you need deep partnership from the manufacturer of the bottles themselves. While you might be an expert in the field that your business is in, you don’t know everything there is to know about blow mold manufacturing. There are important decisions that you need to make based on bottle manufacturing information you might not be aware of. This is why it is key to use a blow molding company who partners with you to determine the best bottling approach for your product.
Even after design, you need to have a great relationship with your bottling manufacturer. Having reliable bottle creation impacts your product’s shelf life and the quality of your product. If a problem arises (which is often unavoidable), the last thing you want is to be waiting on hold with a customer service representative who doesn’t know you, nor care if your business succeeds. When looking for a blow molding company, make sure to ask if an account representative will be assigned to you, who knows your needs and will be the voice on the other end of the line any time you have a question or concern.
Additionally, it’s not a bad idea to call the bottling manufacturer you’re considering a few times before you go into business with them. Ask them an annoying amount of questions. Ask the same questions to several people. Make sure that the answers you get from every person you speak to are consistent, and they have time to make sure your satisfaction is achieved. This is the kind of factor you want to determine before you sign the contract, not after! - Future-proof Your Blow Molding Decision
It is a nightmare if you go through the whole process of setting up a blow molding company for your business, designing the best bottle for your product with them, getting into business, and then realizing that you have to start all over from scratch in just a short time. Avoid this fiasco by taking the following factors into consideration:- How long has the bottle manufacturer been in business? The longer a manufacturer has been around, the more likely that are going to keep on trucking. You can use a new manufacturer of course, but new businesses in the blow molding industry tend to run a higher risk of shutting down than older, established businesses.
- How flexible is the manufacturer? The needs you have today might not be the needs you’re going to have in a few years. Hopefully, your business will grow and expand and your quantity demands will grow. Maybe you’ll make changes to your product over time and your bottling needs will change. In these cases, you want to use a bottling manufacturer who can be flexible to meet your needs.
- How long does the manufacturer tend to keep accounts? It’s a red flag if companies only use the bottle manufacturer for a few years and then move along to someone new.
- Look for Cutting Edge Technology, But Not Bleeding Edge
Using modern technology in the blow molding process will create the best quality bottles at the lowest cost. That being said, brand new equipment tends to have a lot of issues that have to be straightened out. You don’t want to use a blow molding service who acquired their equipment in 1918 and never made a change to is since, but you also don’t want to be the guinea pig that experiments with a new bottle making technique.