Free calculator
Box, filler, tape and insert into a cost per parcel, then the two multipliers most estimates miss: the orders that ship in two boxes, and the packaging that never ships at all.
Packaging, per order
€0,89
Materials per parcel
€0,80
before splits and waste
21Per month
€628,28
inside logistics
Per year
€7.539,36
at this volume
What the warehouse actually does
Two multipliers most packaging estimates leave out, and together they are commonly a tenth of the cost.
↑ ↓ to nudge, Shift for ten. Commas or dots both work.
Packaging is charged per parcel and earns nothing back, so it is a fixed bite out of every basket regardless of size. On a small order it is a serious share of the margin; on a large one it disappears, which is why average packaging cost per euro of revenue tells you almost nothing.
1,0% of an average order, and €7.539,36 a year at 706 orders a month. The parcel itself is €0,80; splits and waste add the rest.
An estimate from flat rates. In nouz every order is priced from the costs of its own day.
A packaging cost calculator adds the box, filler, tape and inserts into a cost per parcel, then applies split shipments and waste to reach a real cost per order. It reports the monthly and yearly totals and packaging as a share of your average order value.
The formula
Packaging costs the same whether the box holds €20 or €300 of product, which makes it one of the purest per-order costs in a store. As a share of revenue it looks trivial on a big basket and alarming on a small one, and the average across both tells you almost nothing useful.
Two multipliers separate a materials list from a real cost. An order that splits into two parcels pays for two of everything, so a store shipping 1,08 parcels per order is 8% above its own materials cost before anything goes wrong. And packaging waste, crushed boxes, misprinted labels, spoiled inserts, is a real few percent that never reaches a customer.
What is deliberately not here is the EPR fee. That is a separate charge per kilogram of packaging placed on a market, at a rate from your own scheme contract, and it has its own calculator so the two never end up inside each other.
Where it goes wrong
The materials price per thousand is where packaging cost estimates start, and it is rarely where they should end.
A back-ordered item, a bulky item shipping separately or a multi-warehouse pick all produce two parcels on one order, each with its own box, filler and label. Most warehouse reports know the parcel count; most cost estimates use the order count.
Crushed boxes, misprinted labels, over-filled voids and the packaging used for returns processing are all bought and never billed to a customer. A few percent sounds like rounding until it is multiplied by a year of parcels.
A box two sizes too large costs more to buy, needs more filler and often crosses into a higher volumetric weight bracket with the carrier. Right-sizing is the one packaging change that reduces three costs at once.
Packaging as a percentage of turnover is meaningless because the cost does not scale with the basket. The useful figures are euros per parcel and the share it takes of your SMALLEST common order, which is where it actually threatens a margin.
Worked example
The calculator’s defaults: a 42 cent mailer, 18 cents of filler, 9 cents of tape and label, an 11 cent insert. Eighty cents of materials for one parcel.
At 1,08 parcels per order and 3% waste, the real cost per order is 89 cents, and at 706 orders a month that is €7.539 a year of cardboard.
Eighty cents became eighty-nine, an 11% gap that lives entirely in the two multipliers. On this store’s €85 order that is barely 1% of the basket; on a €20 order it is 4,5%, and the same box is doing the same job in both.
That asymmetry is the argument for a free shipping threshold, and for looking hard at any product that habitually sells alone in a small basket.
In the app
A calculator works from flat rates you type once. nouz prices every single order from the cost rules that were in force on that order's own date, and rebuilds the same statement every night from your own orders and your own ad spend.
More calculators
Each one is a different question about the same statement. All 32 are free, and none of them asks you to sign up.
All calculatorsThe terms this calculator uses
The long version
Want the long version rather than the arithmetic?
EPR per parcel10,8 centsone small box into Germany, at a store's own rates10 min readPackaging EPR: what it actually costs you per parcelEPR is charged on the weight of packaging you place on a market, by material. Here is the arithmetic per parcel, and where the cost lands on a P&L.Packaging EPR cost per parcelnouz prices packaging inside logistics for every order, per parcel, so a split shipment costs what a split shipment costs and the month's total is a fact rather than an estimate.