About us

A video store, two Four Squares, a book shop. Cardboard is the one that stuck.

Custom Cartons has been making boxes in Tauranga since 1997. Allan and Wendy bought the business and have run it ever since, on the same idea it started with: small runs, odd shapes, quick turnarounds, made here.

1997Established

TaurangaWhere every box is made

NZ wideWhere they end up

The long way round

How Allan and Wendy ended up running a box factory

Not a straight line. Almost none of the good ones are.

Before all this

Retail, and lots of it

A video store, two Four Squares, a book shop, then eleven years running apartments on the Gold Coast. Four decades of self-employment between them, and a working theory that good service is the whole business.

1997

Custom Cartons starts up

The business is established in Tauranga to fill a gap in the cardboard packaging industry: custom die cut boxes, made locally, without a minimum order the size of a shipping container.

Some years later

Allan and Wendy buy the business

They turned up to buy a box business and fell for the cardboard itself. Since then they have grown it in every direction: more machines, more people, custom design and CAD drawn in house, printing, and a pick pack and dispatch service. Same factory, a lot more they can do in it.

Today

Design, make, print, dispatch

We draw the die line, cut it, print it, and can pick and pack your orders into it too. All from one building on Matakokiri Drive.

And now

Cardboard everything, not just boxes

Doll houses, laptop stands, retail displays, wine carriers, plant boxes with handles. People turn up with an odd idea and we draw a die line for it. If it can be made in cardboard, we have probably made it.