Amcor Rigid Packaging: Your Questions Answered (From Someone Who Orders From Them)

I've been coordinating packaging orders for a 340-person consumer goods company since 2021. We've worked with Amcor's rigid plastics division for about three years now—not exclusively, but they handle roughly 40% of our container needs. These are the questions I get from colleagues, the questions I wish I'd asked earlier, and a few things you probably haven't thought to ask yet.

What exactly does "Amcor Rigid" mean? Aren't they a flexible packaging company?

Here's the thing: Amcor does both. Their rigid plastics division handles containers, bottles, jars, and closures—basically anything that holds its shape. The flexible side does pouches, films, and wraps. When I first started ordering, I didn't realize these were essentially different business units with different contacts, different minimums, and different lead times.

If you're looking for rigid containers, you want Amcor Rigid Plastics specifically. Don't assume someone from their flexibles team can help you with bottle specs. I learned that the hard way in Q2 2022 when I spent two weeks going back and forth with the wrong division.

What's the deal with their Evansville Indiana facility?

The Amcor Evansville Indiana plant is one of their major rigid packaging production sites in the Midwest. From a procurement perspective, what matters is this: if you're shipping to destinations in the central or eastern U.S., the Evansville location can sometimes mean faster delivery and lower freight costs compared to ordering from a West Coast facility.

I can't speak to their internal production allocation—that's not my expertise. What I can tell you is that when I've specified Midwest delivery destinations, our account rep has mentioned Evansville as a shipping origin. For our Indianapolis warehouse, that's been a 2-3 day difference versus orders that shipped from further away.

What's happening with Amcor news today? I keep hearing about mergers.

You're probably seeing coverage of the Berry Global acquisition. As of early 2025, Amcor announced plans to acquire Berry Global, which would create a massive combined packaging company. I'm not a financial analyst, so I can't speak to stock implications or regulatory approval timelines.

From a buyer's perspective, here's what I'm watching: potential changes to account management, possible consolidation of product lines, and whether pricing structures shift during integration. The conventional wisdom is that mergers create uncertainty. My experience with 200+ vendor relationships suggests that's sometimes true—but it also sometimes creates opportunities when sales teams are eager to lock in long-term commitments.

If you're placing orders now, I'd recommend confirming your contact and pricing in writing. Not because I expect problems, but because organizational changes can mean your usual rep moves to a different role.

How do their minimums work for smaller orders?

This is where my early experience with Amcor taught me something. Everything I'd read about large packaging suppliers said they don't want small orders. In practice, I found their approach more nuanced than expected.

For stock containers—standard shapes and sizes they already produce—minimums can be surprisingly reasonable. We've done orders as small as 5,000 units for certain bottle styles. Custom molds are a different story entirely. You're looking at tooling costs that only make sense at higher volumes.

When I was starting out, the vendors who treated my $800 test orders seriously are the ones I still use for $15,000 orders. Amcor wasn't the cheapest option for our initial trial run, but they didn't make me feel like a nuisance either. That matters when you're building a relationship.

Small doesn't mean unimportant—it means potential. I'd rather work with a supplier who sees a 5,000-unit order as the start of something than one who makes me feel like I'm wasting their time.

What about lead times? How far ahead do I need to plan?

Looking back, I should have asked this question more specifically during our first conversation. At the time, I assumed "4-6 weeks" meant 4-6 weeks. It doesn't always.

Here's what I've learned to clarify upfront:

Stock items: 2-4 weeks has been typical for us, sometimes faster.
Custom colors on standard shapes: Add 1-2 weeks for color matching.
Fully custom containers: Could be 8-12 weeks or more, depending on tooling.

The trigger event that changed how I think about this: a product launch in September 2023 where I assumed our "confirmed" timeline included freight. It didn't. The containers were ready on schedule, but I hadn't accounted for shipping to our fulfillment center. We made it work, but barely.

Now I always ask: "When you say X weeks, does that mean ready to ship, or delivered to our location?"

How does pricing compare to other rigid packaging suppliers?

I'm not going to give you specific numbers because pricing varies so much by volume, specs, and timing. What I can share is the pattern I've seen across our vendor mix.

Amcor isn't usually the cheapest quote we get. They're also not the most expensive. For standard containers, they've typically landed in the middle third of quotes we've received. Where they've been more competitive is on larger volumes and multi-year agreements.

Three things I've learned to check beyond the per-unit price:

Setup fees for custom work. Tooling costs if you need a new mold. Freight—especially if you're comparing suppliers at different distances from your destination.

In Q4 2024, we tested quotes from four suppliers for identical specs. The per-unit variation was about 35%. But when I added freight and setup costs, the actual total-cost variation was closer to 20%. The "cheapest" per-unit quote wasn't the cheapest total order.

Is there anything I should know that I probably haven't thought to ask?

Yes. Ask about their sustainability documentation.

This isn't something I worried about in 2021. By 2024, our marketing team needed recycled content certifications, recyclability claims for packaging copy, and documentation for our ESG reporting. Amcor has been pretty good about providing this, but I wish I'd established what documentation they could supply before we needed it urgently.

I'm not a sustainability expert, so I can't evaluate their environmental claims versus competitors. What I can tell you is that having proper documentation ready has saved me scrambling when our brand team needs proof for packaging claims. According to the FTC's Green Guides (ftc.gov), environmental marketing claims need substantiation. Make sure your supplier can actually provide what you'll need to back up any claims you plan to make.

One more thing: ask about their quality guarantee process before you have a problem. We had one order—not Amcor, different supplier—where containers arrived with inconsistent threading. Figuring out the complaint process while our production line was waiting was not fun. Now I confirm the quality escalation contact as part of onboarding any packaging vendor.

If I could redo my first Amcor order, I'd get all of this in writing upfront. But given what I knew then—which was basically nothing about procurement—my choices were reasonable. You're ahead of where I was just by asking these questions.