A packaging request for proposal is supposed to produce comparable bids. Most produce a set of documents that cannot be compared at all, because the specification left too much undefined and every bidder resolved the ambiguity differently and in their own favour.
Here is what the good ones contain, from the perspective of somebody who has to price them.
1 · Dimensions stated correctly
Length × width × height, inside dimensions, with length being the longer side of the open face. State explicitly that they are inside dimensions.
Roughly a third of the RFPs we see give outside dimensions without saying so, or give height first. Both produce a box that is the wrong size, and the error surfaces when a trailer arrives.
2 · The test type, named
ECT or Mullen. Not 'heavy duty', not 'strong'. If you do not know which your application needs, say what the failure mode is — crushing under a stack, or puncture in handling — and a competent bidder will tell you.
3 · Real stack height and real pallets
Not the designed stack height. The actual one, including the pallet somebody adds at the end of a shift. And the actual pallet dimensions you own, measured, not the standard.
Half an inch of overhang costs about three trips of container life. Specify to your pallets, not to the GMA standard.
4 · Volume with a shape
Annual volume is nearly useless on its own. Give a monthly profile, or at minimum a peak-to-trough ratio. A requirement that is flat across the year prices very differently from one that triples in September, because the supplier has to hold inventory for the peak.
5 · Destination postal codes
On low-density freight, geography moves the delivered price more than any other factor. An RFP that asks for an FOB price and then handles freight separately is asking for a number that means nothing, and it prevents bidders from proposing the consolidation that would actually save you money.
6 · What happens to the box afterwards
Does it come back? Does anybody reuse it? Is it baled? Does it go out with product and never return?
This is the question that most changes a good supplier's proposal, and almost no RFP asks it. If there is any return leg at all — even an internal one — a reusable container programme usually beats single-use procurement on total cost, and a bidder who is only asked for a box price cannot tell you that.
The things that make an RFP unanswerable
- 'Best price' with no grade specified. For used material this is meaningless; for new it invites under-specification.
- A fixed delivery date for every release, with no window. On empty packaging a three-day window is worth more than most volume discounts.
- A sustainability section asking for a carbon figure with no methodology. Everybody will give you a flattering number computed differently.
- Requiring a sample before quoting, on used material. Stock turns; the sample will not be representative and nobody can promise it will be.
- Weighting price at 90% and then expecting advice.
The sustainability section, done properly
Ask for three things: tonnage reused versus recycled reported separately, the residual fraction with its composition, and the emission coefficients behind any carbon claim. That combination is very hard to fake and very easy for an honest supplier to provide.
Do not ask for a diversion percentage. It treats reuse and recycling as equivalent, which inverts the environmental ranking and rewards the supplier who bales everything.
One final suggestion
Include a short section describing what goes wrong today. Not what you want — what breaks, what gets damaged, which size runs out. Bidders who read it will propose something useful. Bidders who ignore it have told you something important about how they will behave as a supplier.
Our pieces are written by the people who do the work rather than by a content agency, which is why they contain more numbers and fewer adjectives than is fashionable. If a figure here does not match your experience, we would genuinely like to hear about it — two of our published coefficients have changed that way.