Buying a bottle filling and packing line from China: what decides the price

The single most common enquiry we answer from Africa and South America is some version of "how much for a filling line". It cannot be answered as asked, and a supplier who answers it anyway is quoting a machine that may not fit your product. Three figures decide it, and they take a minute to write down.

The three figures

Bottles per hour. Not per day, per hour, at the rate you actually intend to run. A line sized on a daily total and run in one shift is a different machine from the same total across three shifts.

The container. Material, neck finish, fill volume and whether the format changes between runs. A line that handles one bottle is cheaper than one that changes over, and changeover time is where a line either earns or loses its capacity.

The product. Water, oil, a carbonated drink and a viscous sauce need different filling principles. This is the question most often skipped, and the one most likely to produce a machine that technically works and commercially does not.

What is actually in a line

Most buyers order a line rather than a machine, and the sections are quoted separately so you can stage the investment. Our bottle filling and batch coding machinery covers the wet end and the date coding that most export markets require on the pack. After filling, the pack has to be closed and identified: labelling and packing machines and strapping and sealing machines are the sections buyers most often add in year two, once volume justifies them.

Where a buyer is building capacity rather than replacing a machine, the processing plant range is the right starting point, because the filling line should be sized against what the plant upstream can actually deliver.

Judging a Chinese supplier on a filling line

There is no shortage of companies in China offering to sell you one. The ones worth your time are distinguishable without visiting a factory:

• They ask about your product and your bottle before quoting a price. A number that arrives before those questions is a number for a different machine.
• They give a specification in figures you can put in a tender - filling accuracy, speed at a stated bottle size, installed power - rather than adjectives.
• They will say what is not included. Compressed air, water treatment and the conveyor between sections are the three most common gaps in a quotation that looked cheap.
• They quote CIF to your port with a lead time, not ex-works with the hard part left to you.

Ask for the first two in writing on the first exchange. A supplier who cannot produce them in writing before an order will not produce them after one.

Getting it there

For African buyers the conformity route matters more than the freight. Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe all verify before shipment rather than on arrival, which means the documents are prepared in China while the machine is being built - our work, not yours, provided it is planned at order rather than discovered at the quay. Zambia, Malawi, Namibia and Mauritius work differently again. Each of those markets has its own page on this site setting out the port and the route.

For South American buyers the usual constraints are documentation language and the inland leg from the discharge port. Both are priced at quotation if you name the final destination rather than the port.

Send the three figures at the top of this article and a description of your product, and the reply is a specification and a delivered price rather than a brochure. Request a quotation, or browse the full food processing equipment range.