Custom spout pouch — made to order: size, thickness, structure, spout position and printing up to 10 colours are all specified per run.
A spout pouch replaces a bottle for anything poured. The fitment is welded into the top or the corner seal, so the pack pours in a controlled stream and recloses with a screw cap — no decanting, no funnel, and a fraction of the shipping weight and warehouse volume of the rigid container it displaces. Empty spout pouches ship flat; empty bottles ship air.
Structures for liquid fills
Liquids are heavier than they look and behave badly in transit, so the structures here are built around puncture resistance as much as barrier. PET/NY/PE carries a nylon layer that resists the flex-cracking a full pouch suffers on a pallet. PET/NY/AL/PE adds aluminium and takes retorting at 121 °C, which is what makes a shelf-stable sauce or a ready-to-eat meal possible in this format. Both rate 5 of 5 for oxygen and moisture barrier.
Specifying the fitment
Spout position — top or corner — cap size, pouch size, thickness and structure are all made to order, with printing up to ten colours. Position changes how the pack is filled and how it is held, so tell us the filling line and the fill weight together. Typical fills are sauces and condiments, cooked and deli food, ready-to-eat meals, wet pet food and beverages. If the product is sterilised rather than hot-filled, see the retort pouch; the rest of the range is in flexible pouches.
What moves the price
The fitment. A spout and cap are a bought component fitted in a separate operation, and cap size and type move the price more than most buyers expect. After that the structure, which for liquids means nylon and often foil, and then the usual quantity and print levers. Corner spouts and top spouts cost similarly but change the filling equipment, so the decision has a capital consequence as well as a unit one.
Where it goes wrong
Underestimating what a full pouch does in transit. Liquids are heavy and they flex the pack constantly, and a structure without nylon will flex-crack along the fold lines — usually discovered as leakers at the far end of a shipping route rather than on the line. The second is a spout position chosen for how the pack looks rather than how it is filled and held; the filling line has a view on this and it is cheaper to hear it before tooling. And a retortable pouch needs a retort-rated cap: the film surviving 121 °C is no use if the fitment does not.
Where custom spout pouch is used
Sauces, purées, beverages, wet pet food, liquid supplements and cosmetic refills. It is the format that most often replaces a rigid bottle, and the case for it is usually freight and shelf space before it is cost. Retortable structures make shelf-stable sauces and ready meals possible in a pouch — see ready meal packaging — and for personal care refills the structure follows the formulation rather than the format, which the cosmetics page explains.
What to send us for a quotation
A quotation for custom spout pouch is written against a specification, so the more of this you can send, the closer the first number is to the real one: which structure, or the shelf life and the product so we can choose one — PET/VMPET/PE, PET/NY/PE and PET/NY/AL/PE are available here; the temperature the pack has to survive, from filling through to how the customer opens it (ambient, and to 121 °C with PET/NY/AL/PE for this product); the line it runs on — this one is specified for pre-made pouch filling and Retort processing; which options you want fitted: top spout, Corner spout and Cap size; the values for size, Thickness, Structure and Spout position.
Send the fill weight and the quantity with it. Where you already buy something similar, a sample is worth more than a description — we measure what is actually there rather than quoting against how it was once written down.
Food-contact and export requirements are set out in FDA 21 CFR 177, the US rule for food-contact polymers; the declarations for this structure are issued with the order.
