If you’ve ever placed an order for tubular rivets—whether for automotive framing, electronics assembly, furniture manufacturing, or even medical device production—you’ve probably thought a lot about material grades, shank diameters, or shear strength. How many times, though, have you stopped to ask: what’s going to be on the outside of those little metal fasteners when they reach my workshop? As a tubular rivet supplier who’s spent 12 years walking shop floors, fielding late-night calls about backorders, and troubleshooting what arrives broken before the line even starts, I can tell you the packaging of these small parts isn’t just a box full of screws. It’s part of your process, part of your supply chain, and it can make or beat your production schedule long before you drive the first rivet. Tubular Rivet
Over the years, I’ve learned that the right packaging depends on three things: how you use rivets, how many you need at a time, and how you’re set up to unload them without causing damage. I’ve worked with everyone from small prototype shops ordering 50 pieces at a time to large automotive factories receiving 500,000 rivets in a single shipment, and every group has their own non-negotiables. Let’s break down the options I offer my customers, why each works, and the scenarios where one beats the rest.
First, there’s the most common option: bulk packaging. For any operation using hundreds or thousands of rivets per shift, this is the workhorse of fastener packaging. Bulk usually means loose rivets packed inside sturdy, industrial-grade corrugated boxes, often lined with a thin, anti-rust or anti-tarnish film. Most of the time, we include small desiccant packs to absorb moisture, especially if we’re shipping to places with high humidity or to customers who store parts for more than a few weeks. The key here is quality: not all corrugated is equal. I learned that lesson the hard way about six years ago when a customer called to say 100,000 aluminum tubular rivets arrived rusted on the heads. The box we’d used was a thin, single-wall type that had gotten damp in transit, and the desiccants we’d used were too small to make a difference. Now all our bulk bulk boxes are double-wall, with a polyethylene liner that keeps moisture out, and we match desiccant counts to shipment volume—100 grams for every 50,000 rivets, for example, depending on material.
Bulk is great because it’s low cost, holds a lot of parts, and works if you have an automated feeding system. But it comes with tradeoffs. When rivets are loose in a box, they can scratch each other, especially if they have a smooth, bare finish or a thin plated coating like zinc. We had another customer in the appliance industry that makes stainless steel washing machine drums; their tubular rivets have a passivated finish to resist corrosion, and loose bulk packaging was scratching the shanks, leading to rejected parts during inspection. Also, if you’re a small operation that only needs a few hundred rivets for a prototype, unloading a full 50-pound box is a waste of time and storage space. Bulk is for high-volume, consistent production, not small or irregular runs.
Next, there’s small lot packaging, tailored for low-volume orders, prototypes, or small-batch manufacturing. This is where individual bags or plastic containers come in. For small orders, I often pack tubular rivets in resealable polyethylene bags, usually 100 to 500 pieces per bag, with a printed label that lists material, size, grade, and lot number. The resealable seal is a game-changer for customers who don’t use all the parts at once—they can close the bag and put it on a shelf without worrying about tarnish or dust getting in. For even smaller lots, like 10 to 50 rivets for prototype work, we use rigid plastic clamshell containers. These are sturdier than bags, so they protect delicate rivets from being crushed in a toolbox or on a crowded workbench. I work with a team of aerospace engineers that do small-batch bracket testing; they swear by the clamshells because they can grab a handful of rivets without fumbling through a loose bag, and each container has a clear side so they can see exactly how many parts are left without opening it.
But small lot packaging isn’t one-size-fits-all either. I once had a customer order 300 brass tubular rivets for a custom jewelry line and complain that our standard polyethylene bags left black marks on the rivet heads. Brass is a soft metal, and the plastic can abrade it if the bag is packed too tight, especially during transit. Now for soft or polished materials like brass, copper, or uncoated steel, we switch to anti-abrasive, low-density polyethylene bags that are softer and less likely to scratch delicate finishes. That small change cut their reject rate by 80% within two months, and they’ve been a repeat customer ever since.
Then there’s the packaging that’s made for assembly lines—what I call kitting and specialized packaging. This is for customers who use tubular rivets in automated or semi-automated processes, where loading parts efficiently and consistently is make-or-break. Kitting usually means packing rivets in custom-sized plastic bins or trays designed to fit directly into their feeding systems, like vibratory bowls or pick-and-place machines. For example, I work with a medical device manufacturer that uses tubular rivets to assemble pacemaker housings; their feeding system requires rivets to be oriented a certain way, loose or mixed orientations would jam the machine and cause downtime. So we pack their rivets in rigid, precision-molded trays that hold each rivet in a fixed position, all oriented correctly, so they slide right into their bowl feeder with no sorting needed. No more workers sitting at a table picking out oriented rivets for an hour a day, no more jams from mixed parts. That kitting added 15 minutes of production time per shift for them, which adds up to thousands of dollars a week.
Another specialized option is reels for tubular rivets, though this is less common than for other fasteners like screws or bolts. It works for customers using fully automated, high-speed assembly lines that feed parts directly from a reel. For these, we mount tubular rivets on plastic reels, held in individual pockets or strips, so they feed continuously into the machine. I’ve only recommended reels to a handful of customers, mostly large electronics manufacturers assembling printed circuit boards where speed is everything. But it’s a good option to have, and I’ve found that when customers do use reels, they reduce assembly time by 20% on average, because there’s no downtime from refilling bins or kitting parts manually.
The one thing I always emphasize to customers is that packaging can add value or create problems, depending on how you align it with your operation. I’ve seen a customer save $2,000 a month by switching from bulk boxes to custom kitting, because they eliminated the need for two part-time workers just to sort loose rivets. I’ve also seen a customer lose a whole production batch because their rivets were packed in the wrong type of bag, leading to scratches that made the parts unusable. The goal of packaging isn’t just to get parts from our warehouse to yours—it’s to make sure when you open them, they’re ready to use, no extra work, no wasted parts, no delays.
Now, I know every shop’s needs change. Some months you might be running a 24/7 assembly line that needs 500,000 rivets, the next month you’re working on a custom project that only needs 200. That’s why I don’t push one packaging option over another; I work with customers to figure out what fits their current and future needs. If you’re tired of sorting loose rivets, or dealing with damaged parts when you open a box, or spending too much storage space on unused rivets, let’s talk. Whatever your volume, your process, or your timeline, I can help you pick the right packaging for your tubular rivets, so you can focus on what matters most: building great products, not troubleshooting fastener packaging.
If you’d like to learn more about our tubular rivet packaging options or place an order, please reach out to our team to discuss your specific needs.
Tubular Rivet References
- Fastener Packaging Best Practices, Fastener Technology International, 2022
- Packaging Solutions for Industrial Fasteners, Society of Manufacturing Engineers, 2021
- "Reducing Fastener Damage Through Custom Packaging," Journal of Industrial Packaging, Vol. 18, No. 3, 2020
Wenzhou Liao Fasteners Co., Ltd.
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