Supplier listings captured 3 November 2026; industrial press figures from manufacturer statements and trade-press reports. Every price is labelled by type.
“Single pass printing machine” covers two products that share a principle and almost nothing else. At one end, Chinese suppliers sell small single-pass printers for logos on paper bags and pizza boxes from about $2,300. At the other, corrugated converters spend millions on presses such as HP’s PageWide C500 and EFI’s Nozomi, which print whole boxes at line speed. Both work the same way: the printheads are fixed across the full print width and the material passes under them once, instead of a carriage scanning back and forth. Everything else, from width and speed to ink and the equipment around the printer, is what sets the price.
Why single pass costs what it does
A scanning printer can cover a wide sheet with a few printheads by moving them across it many times. A single-pass printer needs enough printheads to span the entire width at once, so cost rises with width and with resolution. It also has no second pass to hide a blocked nozzle: a missing jet prints as a streak along the whole run. HP’s answer on the C500 is scale, about one million nozzles with six-times redundancy across a 1.3 m board width at 75 m per minute. Small Chinese units solve it more cheaply with a handful of commercial heads, which keeps the price low but makes nozzle health and daily maintenance part of the operator’s job.
Small and mid-size packaging printers
| Supplier and machine | Size or use | Asking price |
|---|---|---|
| Sunthinks (Shenzhen Yuxunda), one-pass logo printer | Bags, pizza boxes, cups, envelopes | $2,300 to $6,900 |
| Sunthinks, A3/A4 printer with Epson printheads | Corrugated board, direct to packaging | $9,000 to $15,800 |
| Shanghai Rainbow Industrial, printer with dryer | Food packaging, kraft bags, corrugated boxes | $9,500 for 1 to 2 sets; $8,999 from 3 sets |
| Guangzhou Yite Technology, A2 printer | Boxes, kraft bags, corrugated | $12,800 to $18,100 |
| Sunthinks, automatic printer | Egg cartons, corrugated boxes, tote bags | $12,900 for 1 set; $11,500 from 2 sets |
Prices as shown on Alibaba on 3 November 2026, before shipping, import duty and ink.
Two details in these listings matter more than the headline price. First, what is in the box: Shanghai Rainbow’s listing includes a dryer, while others do not say. Water-based inks on coated or glossy board usually need drying or curing, and kraft or uncoated board behaves differently from coated stock, so ask for prints on your own material. Second, the printhead: the A3/A4 model names Epson heads, which are widely available, but the listings rarely state the head count, resolution at speed or expected head life. Those decide the running cost.
Industrial single-pass presses
Corrugated converters buy single-pass presses to replace flexo or litho-lamination on short and medium runs. Prices are rarely published, but manufacturers and buyers occasionally say enough to set the scale. In a 2023 interview with Printweek, an EFI executive said the company has a Nozomi printer for under $2 million that prints more than 1,000 boards an hour. CompanyBox, a US custom-packaging firm, called its second HP PageWide C500 a multi-million-dollar investment in 2024, alongside additional converting equipment. HP describes the C500 as printing up to 75 linear metres per minute on boards up to 1.3 m wide with water-based inks, and the first US unit went to Dusobox in Florida in 2018.
Single pass also runs in textiles and building materials. EFI’s Reggiani BOLT textile printer was described in 2022 as the fastest inkjet textile printer, at up to 90 linear metres per minute, and EFI’s 2012 purchase of Cretaprint brought it the single-pass technology it now uses for corrugated packaging, signage, wood panels and fibre-cement. These are quotation-only machines.
The workflow around the printer
A single-pass printer is one station in a line. Budget separately for:
- Feeding and stacking: manual feeding limits speed on small units; automatic feeders appear on some listings as an option.
- Pretreatment, primer or varnish: some boards need a coating for ink to hold and for rub resistance.
- Drying or UV curing: included on some machines, extra on others.
- Ink: water-based or UV, and whether it is approved for food-contact packaging if that is your market.
- Software: a RIP for colour management and variable data.
- Converting: printed sheets still need cutting, creasing and folding unless you print on finished boxes or bags.
For box and bag makers, our guides to corrugated box machine prices and paper converting machine prices cover the equipment before and after the printer.
Questions to put to suppliers
- Print width, maximum substrate thickness, and speed at the resolution you will actually use.
- Printhead brand, number of heads, and the cost and expected life of a replacement head.
- Ink type, cost per litre, and whether it is suitable for food-contact packaging.
- Whether a dryer or UV curing unit, feeder and RIP software are included.
- Daily and weekly maintenance routine, and what happens when a nozzle fails.
- Sample prints on your own boards or bags, at production speed.
- Voltage, installation, training, warranty, spare-parts lead time, and price basis (FOB, CIF or delivered).
Questions buyers ask
Is single pass faster than a flatbed UV printer? For repeated sheets of the same width, usually yes, because the material moves under fixed heads once. A scanning flatbed prints more slowly but can handle a wider range of sizes with fewer heads.
Why are volume prices lower? Several listings cut the price for two or three units: $9,500 falls to $8,999 on one, $12,900 to $11,500 on another. Ask whether the discount applies to spares and ink too.
Can a small single-pass printer replace flexo? For short runs and personalised packaging it can avoid plates and setup; for long runs, compare cost per box including ink, which suppliers should calculate for your artwork.
How we priced this
The chart below logs the small and mid-size Alibaba asking prices by hand, starting from the listings we saw in early November 2026. Industrial press figures come from manufacturer statements and company announcements; no list price is published for them. We found no first-hand operator reviews of the small Chinese units with running-cost figures, so none are quoted.
| Tracked listing | Configuration | Latest price | Previous price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shanghai Rainbow single-pass packaging printer with dryer, 1-2 sets ($8,999 from 3 sets) | Alibaba-listed asking price, recorded by hand Nov 3, 2026 | $9,500 | No earlier snapshot |
| Guangzhou Yite A2 single-pass packaging printer (low end of $12,800-$18,100) | Alibaba-listed asking price, recorded by hand Nov 3, 2026 | $12,800 | No earlier snapshot |
| Sunthinks automatic single-pass printer for cartons and bags, 1 set ($11,500 from 2 sets) | Alibaba-listed asking price, recorded by hand Nov 3, 2026 | $12,900 | No earlier snapshot |
| Sunthinks A3/A4 single-pass printer, Epson printheads (low end of $9,000-$15,800) | Alibaba-listed asking price, recorded by hand Nov 3, 2026 | $9,000 | No earlier snapshot |
| Sunthinks small one-pass logo printer for bags and pizza boxes (low end of $2,300-$6,900) not in average | Alibaba-listed asking price, recorded by hand Nov 3, 2026 | $2,300 | No earlier snapshot |
Sources: Printweek interview with EFI on single-pass presses and PRINTING United Alliance on the first US HP PageWide C500. Alibaba supplier listings, HP and CompanyBox announcements, Ink World and Sustainable Packaging News reports were also reviewed.
