Custom Packaging Inserts: Protecting and Presenting Your Product
Almost all of us have experienced it. A product gets dropped off at your door in a lovely box; you open it, and the thing inside has slid loose from the tray it was clearly meant to sit in. It rattles. It looks cheap. This is even the case if it was expensive. The insert that was supposed to hold it in place has failed at the one job it was expected to do.
‘Ever received something that's meant to sit snugly in an insert, and it's popped out? If you’ve not, trust me, it’s very annoying! I end up asking myself, what’s the point of the insert?’
– Roisin Donnellan, Boxes To Go
A packaging insert is the shaped layer inside a box that holds a product in position, protects it in transit, and presents it when the box is opened. It’s the difference between a product that arrives sitting exactly where it should and one that arrives loose and possibly damaged. Get it right and it’ll do all 3 jobs at once. Get it wrong, even by a couple of millimetres, and it does none of them.
Let’s take a look at how inserts work, the materials they are made from, and what to think about when you’re searching for the perfect solution.
What an insert actually does
The best insert does all three of these things at once:
It secures the product. A fitted insert keeps the product securely in place, and that's what helps prevent damage. If it can't move around, it can't bump into the sides of the box or knock against other items during transit.
It protects. For fragile products or those with a non-standard shape, the insert absorbs and distributes the knocks a parcel takes as it moves through a delivery network. It’s not just decorative; it’s structural too.
It presents. When the customer lifts the lid, a well-designed insert holds everything in place. The unboxing itself feels like part of the experience of owning the product and that feeling attaches itself to the brand.
This third job is why inserts matter above and beyond simply protecting the product. The moment a box is opened is the first real impression a customer gets of the care given to the product, and the attention to detail that the company has given.
The suitable materials for packaging inserts
There’s no single material that comes out on top in all situations. The right choice depends on the product's weight, fragility, how premium it needs to feel, and your budget.
- Die-cut corrugate. Cardboard cut and creased into trays, partitions or fitments. Versatile, recyclable in most places, and it’s printable. A strong all-rounder for most products.
- Moulded pulp. Formed fibre trays, the material you see cradling glassware and electronics. Good protection, made from recycled fibre, and a natural, understated look.
- Foam. Used where a product needs a snug, high-protection hold, particularly for heavier or precision items. Not as suitable for a brand leaning towards recyclable materials. For this reason, it’s not a go-to for many companies.
- Partitions and dividers. Simple inserts that separate multiple items so they don’t touch. Common for food, drink and multi-packs of bottles or jars.
For many products, the answer is die-cut corrugate, because it balances protection, presentation and recyclability, and it can be cut into shapes a stock tray never could. It’s also well-suited to processes such as digital die-cutting and laser cutting, which we’ll discuss below.
Creating Bespoke Packaging Inserts with Laser and Digital Die-Cutting
Standard, tooled inserts are cut with a physical die, which is ideal for larger volumes but locks you into one shape and carries a huge upfront tooling cost. Digital die-cutting and laser-cutting work straight from a drawing, so an insert can be cut to an exact, complicated shape without having to make a die. That opens up bespoke fitments, short runs and one-off event and PR pieces that wouldn’t be possible with non-digital methods.
A nice example of this is an event display pack we recently designed for a liquor brand. The brief was to produce a single presentation box that had to hold a bottle, a limited-edition card, a wristband and a lollipop and still keep the bottle safe. We laser-cut the insert to size with enough depth that the bottle was properly held and wouldn’t break, while keeping the whole thing looking like a display piece rather than just something there to protect. The client told us what they wanted the box to contain, and we designed the box and the insert concept around it.
That is a common pattern. A brand rarely arrives with a finished insert design. More often, they arrive with a product or a set of items and a sense of how they want it to feel, and the insert gets designed from there.
The part brands most often get wrong: tolerance
If there’s one thing that separates an insert that works from one that fails, it’s measurement.
The single most common mistake is speccing an insert from rough dimensions. A brief that says ‘the product is about 9 by 10 centimetres’ is not enough, because an insert lives or dies on it being snug. If the cutout is a fraction too big, the product slips and pops out, and you are back to the loose, rattling parcel that no one wants to open. A fraction too small and it will not seat at all.
This gets harder the more precise the product is. Think of a vitamin brand with cylindrical tubes that all have to sit grouped together in a tray, or a set of items that need to nest exactly. There is no room for approximation.
What works for us is having the real thing in front of us. Wherever possible, provide a physical sample of the product so the insert can be built around it directly. Where a sample is not available, a CAD drawing with true dimensions is the next best thing. What doesn't work is relying on rough measurements. A rough measurement leads to a poor fit, and a poor fit is exactly what causes products to move around and become damaged.
Top tips for when speccing an insert
These are a few things you should consider when aiming to get the best possible packaging insert for your product:
- Lead with a sample or CAD drawing, not a guess. This is the single biggest lever on whether the insert fits. Everything else is secondary to getting this right.
- Be clear about the job. Is this insert mostly protecting a fragile product, mostly presenting a premium one, or both? Your answers here will decide the materials used and the design.
- Count the cost both ways. An insert adds cost to the pack, but it also saves money by cutting damage in transit. For a fragile or high-value product, a quality insert soon pays for itself.
- Match the material to the brand. A recyclable die-cut tray and a foam fitment send different signals and carry different environmental profiles. Choose carefully based on what impression you want to make as a brand.
- Protection matters, but so does presentation. The insert is visible as soon as the box is opened, so think about how the product is revealed, not just how it's protected during transit.
The small layer that does a lot
An insert is easy to treat as an afterthought, the bit you sort out once the box is decided. In practice, it’s doing a lot of the heavy lifting. It’s why the product arrives intact, why it looks special when the box is opened, and why a customer's first impression is interest and joy, rather than disappointment.
If your product is fragile, made up of multiple components, or simply deserves a premium presentation, it's worth getting the insert right. A packaging specialist can design it with millimetre precision, ensuring everything fits securely and looks the part.
Got a product that deserves better than loose bubble wrap?
Tell us what is going in the box, and send a sample or a CAD drawing if you have one, and we’ll design an insert that holds it exactly, protects it in transit and looks the part when the lid comes off. Short run or full production, we handle the design and keep the process simple from the first sketch to the finished box.