Starting a private label battery line from 50 cartons

Private label is the fastest way for a brand or retail chain to own the battery category. You keep the customer relationship and the margin; the factory absorbs the production complexity. Battery OEM is a mature business, and with the right factory the entry point is smaller than most buyers expect — TIANQIU’s MOQ is 50 cartons, roughly US$2,000.

Step 1 — Send your artwork and market

The factory needs four inputs: your logo, the cell type (e.g. AA ultra alkaline, CR2032 lithium), the pack count per pack, and the format (paper pack, child-resistant, blister, shrink, counter display). TIANQIU’s designers finalize the layout with you, including the CE and 0% Hg marks required for EU retail.

Step 2 — Approve samples before volume

You receive packing samples and a pre-production sample run. This is the stage where artwork mistakes cost nothing: the factory prints on automatic lines and batch-codes everything, so the sample is exactly what the volume run will look like.

Step 3 — Production under your brand

Cells are produced on Japan Mitsubishi automatic lines and packed under your brand with a 100% quality check. Because the whole process — cell production, packing and QC — happens in one plant, the private label line does not depend on third-party packing.

Step 4 — Delivery with documents done

Export packing, shipping marks and the transport certificates (maritime / air / UN38.3, if lithium) are handled by the trade team. CE, RoHS, UL, SGS, PONY, BSCI, ISO9001 and ISO45001 certificates are available for your compliance review.

Why 50 cartons is the right test size

One carton from TIANQIU is one retail case — 40 to 48 pcs of blister cards per carton, or up to 3,000 packs for some formats. 50 cartons is a practical container-fragment order: enough to stock a regional launch or test a format in a single chain, small enough that a format that underperforms costs little to abandon.

The honest middle ground

If your market is competitive, the margin math matters: alkaline delivers 3–4× capacity at a higher price; carbon zinc wins on price for low-drain devices. A two-tier private label — value + premium — is the most common mix we support, and both tiers can ship in the same order.