How are folding cartons made?
🏭 How Are Folding Cartons Made? (Behind the Scenes)
Ever wander down a grocery store aisle and wonder how all those cereal boxes, tissue cartons, and medicine boxes come to life?
They’re everywhere—and each one has to look amazing to catch your eye in the split second you glance at it.
Before those cartons ever hit the shelves, there’s a fascinating process at work. Let’s take a peek behind the scenes at Pacific Forest.
🌲 Step 1: From Tree to Paperboard
It all starts with paperboard. Paper mills blend recycled paper—think newspapers and cardboard—with fresh fibers from trees to create strong, smooth sheets.
Different grades of paperboard are made depending on what the packaging needs to hold—food, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, or industrial goods.
Once ready, the mills roll it into massive spools and send it our way at Pacific Forest.
✂️ Step 2: Sheeting — The Prep Work
When the rolls arrive, our first job is sheeting.
Imagine unwinding a giant roll of paper—but instead of tearing off pieces, we cut precise, identical sheets sized perfectly for printing.
We then stack them neatly on pallets, ready for the next stage: printing.
🎨 Step 3: Printing — Your Brand’s Billboard
Here’s where the magic happens.
Your folding carton is a mini billboard for your brand, so every color, image, and detail matters.
We use offset lithography printing, a method that produces vibrant, consistent results—whether you need 1,000 cartons or 100,000.
Here’s the fun part: printing uses tiny dots of color (CMYK—cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) placed side by side. Your eyes blend those dots into full-color images, just like your home printer—but on a much grander, more precise scale.
We can also add aqueous coatings to protect and enhance the finish, giving your packaging that perfect look and feel.
🔪 Step 4: Cutting the Shape
Once printed, the flat sheets head to the die cutter.
Think of this as the ultimate cookie cutter—it slices your carton shape from the sheet and adds the creases that make folding possible later on.
Precision is everything here: clean cuts and sharp lines ensure your cartons look professional and assemble easily.
This is also where we can add window openings so customers can peek inside and see your product.
🤝 Step 5: Folding and Gluing
Next comes the folding and gluing stage—where your box truly comes to life.
Using advanced, computer-guided machines, we fold each carton along its scored lines and glue one panel to form a sleeve.
Because folding cartons ship flat, they’re efficient to store and transport. Once you receive them, you simply pop them into shape and fill them—by hand or machine.
This step is also where we can apply finishing touches like embossing or debossing to give your packaging extra dimension and sophistication.
📦 Step 6: Packing It All Up
Finally, your finished cartons are bundled, boxed, labeled, and palletized for shipment.
From there, they head to your facility—ready to be filled with your product and sent out into the world.
💡 The Journey Behind Every Box
By the time you see that cereal box, tissue carton, or vitamin pack on a store shelf, it’s already been through a carefully orchestrated process of design, precision, and craftsmanship.
Every fold, cut, and color is intentional—because your packaging doesn’t just hold your product.
It helps sell it.
At Pacific Forest, we make sure every box we produce reflects the same quality and care you put into what’s inside.