Print guides · 4 min read
Why printers have minimum orders, and how to work with them
Minimum order quantities are the most frustrating part of buying print, particularly for a new brand testing a product. They are also not a policy anyone chose. They fall out of the arithmetic of how a press works, and once you can see that arithmetic there are several legitimate ways around it.
The minimum is arithmetic, not policy
An offset press cannot start printing your job. First the plates are made, one for each colour. Then the press is set up, the inks brought to the right density, and sheets run until the colour and registration are correct. Only then does a sheet come off that you could actually use.
All of that costs the same whether the run is five thousand or a hundred thousand. On a large run it disappears into the unit price. On a small one it is most of the unit price, which is why a printer quoting a tiny offset job produces a number that looks absurd. It is not a markup, it is the setup showing through.
What make-ready actually consumes
Plates are the visible cost, one per colour per job. Less visible is the press time: washing up the previous job's ink, mounting plates, and running the press up to colour. On a multi-colour carton job that is a meaningful block of time on an expensive machine before a single saleable sheet exists.
There is also material waste. The sheets run while the colour is being brought in are printed and discarded. That waste is roughly constant per setup, so as a proportion of the order it grows as the order shrinks.
Why the offset line sits around fifty thousand
Our offset minimum is fifty thousand units, and that number is not arbitrary. It is roughly where the setup cost has been diluted enough that the unit price is genuinely competitive and the customer is paying mostly for cartons rather than mostly for preparation.
Below it, offset still physically works. It just stops being good value, and quoting it as though it were would be misleading. That is the point at which the honest answer is to change process rather than negotiate the price.
Digital removes the setup, not the unit cost
Digital printing has no plates and effectively no make-ready, so there is no minimum to speak of. Fifty cartons is a real order. Turnaround is measured in days rather than weeks because the preparation stage largely disappears.
What it does not do is get cheaper at volume in the way offset does. The cost per unit stays broadly flat, so the two processes cross over at some quantity. Below the crossover digital wins clearly, above it offset wins clearly, and near it the answer depends on the specific job.
Four ways to work around a minimum
Print digitally for the launch and switch to offset when volume justifies it, accepting that colour will need managing across the change. Gang several products or variants into one offset run so they share a single setup. Or print the economic quantity once and take delivery in stages, so you get the unit price without warehousing everything at once.
The fourth is simply to ask for both quotes. A printer running offset and digital in the same building has no reason to push you toward one, and seeing the two numbers side by side usually answers the question immediately.
The question to actually ask
Instead of asking whether a printer will go below its minimum, ask what quantity makes the job economic and what it would cost digitally at the quantity you need. Those two answers together tell you whether to order more, order differently, or order elsewhere.
We run both processes in Lahore and quote either way, so send the specification with the quantity you actually want rather than the quantity you think we require.
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