Both terms get used loosely. The difference decides who makes your product, who buys your materials, and how many trucks sit between your product and the shelf.
Co-packing starts with a finished product. Co-manufacturing starts with raw materials. Truvant is primarily a co-packer, runs a focused co-manufacturing operation for industrial liquids, and puts both on the same campus when a program needs it.
A co-packer packages a product you already make: filling it into its final pack, labeling, cartoning, kitting, building displays and shipping. A co-manufacturer makes the product itself to your specification, then packages it.
Co-packing takes over the last steps of your supply chain. Co-manufacturing takes over production as well.
Co-packing, also called contract packaging, starts where production ends. Your product arrives finished. The co-packer turns it into units a retailer or a customer can receive.
That work usually covers:
This is most of what Truvant does. More than 3,400 people across seven campuses in Wisconsin, Texas, New Jersey and Poland pack products for beauty and personal care, health and wellness, vitamins and supplements, food and beverage and consumer products brands.
A co-manufacturer, or "co-man," takes on production. It buys the raw materials, makes the product to your formula, runs the quality checks on the batch, and then packs it. You get finished goods without building or running a plant.
Truvant co-manufactures in one category: industrial liquids, such as cleaning formulations. You bring the formula. We mix, blend, fill and finish the product on dedicated lines, then pack it on the same campus.
For every other product category, we are your co-packer.
Co-packing comes in two commercial shapes, and the choice affects your costs as much as the partner you pick.
Tolling. You supply the product and the packaging components. The co-packer supplies the lines, the people and the quality system, and charges for the work. You keep direct control of your materials and what you pay for them.
Turnkey. You supply the product. The co-packer sources the packaging components, runs production, and can build displays, store finished goods and ship to your retailers. Buying, supplier management and inventory planning move off your team.
We run programs both ways, and many customers change models as a program grows. Turnkey tends to pay off when packaging purchasing takes more of your team's time than it should, or when a partner's buying volume gets better component prices than you can get alone. For one global customer, our procurement team saved more than $3.5 million over two years across its US and European programs.
The same split exists in manufacturing. In toll manufacturing, the brand supplies the raw materials and pays for processing. In full contract manufacturing, the partner buys the materials too.
When the co-manufacturer and the co-packer are separate companies, product travels between them by truck. Every transfer adds freight, handling, another quality check and another schedule to coordinate. Each company adds its own margin as well.
When both steps happen on one campus, the product moves from the filling line to the packing line without leaving our hands. It runs under one quality system and one production schedule, with one partner accountable for the finished unit.
We also size the setup to the program: shared lines for work that runs in campaigns, or a dedicated operation when the volume justifies it. When a global brand needed a new US operation, we took a 355,517 sq ft facility from signed contract to commercial production in six months. Read the DFW Greenfield case study.
Two pressures are behind many of the conversations we have this year.
The first is packaging regulation. The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation has applied since 12 August 2026, and California's SB 54 is pushing US brands toward recyclable packaging. A redesigned pack means new materials, new tooling and new line settings. A co-packer with its own packaging engineers can manage the redesign and the production change as one project. When a beauty brand moved to recycled PET, we took its packaging from 12% to about 100% rPET, at an 80% post-consumer recycled spec, in under a year with zero supply disruptions. Read the rPET case study.
The second is line capacity. SKU counts keep growing, and seasonal and promotional formats rarely fit lines built for everyday packs. Moving the packing step to a partner frees your own lines for the products they run best, without new capital spend.
What co-packing is.
Co-packing means a partner takes your finished product and gets it market-ready: primary and secondary packaging, kitting, display assembly, labeling, and fulfillment. You make the product; we make it sellable, at retail scale. This is the core of what Truvant does.
What co-manufacturing is.
Co-manufacturing goes a step earlier: the partner actually makes the product to your specification, then packs it. At Truvant, we co-manufacture deliberately narrowly: non-food, industrial liquids like cleaning formulations, mixed, blended, filled, and finished on dedicated lines.
Which one do you need?
If you have a finished product and need it packed, kitted, or fulfilled, you need a co-packer. If you need someone to produce a non-food liquid to your spec and finish it, that's co-manufacturing. Plenty of programs use both, and running them under one roof removes a handoff, a truck, and a margin stack.
Co-packing packages a product you already make. Co-manufacturing makes the product to your formula, then packages it. Truvant is primarily a co-packer and also co-manufactures industrial liquids on dedicated lines.
Co-man is short for co-manufacturer or co-manufacturing: a partner that produces a product to another company's formula, usually under that company's brand.
In toll manufacturing, the brand supplies the raw materials and pays the partner for processing. In contract manufacturing, the partner usually buys the materials as well.
Yes. We co-pack across all seven of our campuses and co-manufacture industrial liquids, and we run both on the same campus so products move from production to packing without a transfer between suppliers.
Yes. That is most of what we do. You ship us your finished product, in bulk or ready to pack, and we handle filling, labeling, cartoning, kitting, display assembly, storage and shipping to your retailers or customers. You keep making the product, and we take packing off your lines.
Yes. Many brands have one partner make the product and another pack it. Your manufacturer ships the finished product to one of our campuses, and we pack it to your specification.
Yes. Our packaging engineers can redesign a pack before it goes into production, for example to use less material or move to recycled content, and then run the new pack on our lines. With one beauty brand, we went from 12% to about 100% recycled PET in under a year, with zero supply disruptions.