How long does plastic injection moulding and tooling take to manufacture and ship?

Confidence 4/5 Established practice

Lead time for plastic injection moulding and tooling:

Tool design and build: 20–35 days. First-off sample: 3–7 days after that. Mass production: 15–30 days.

Injection mould tooling cost and lead-time benchmarks — Industry practice; consistent across published supplier guidance
Moulds under HS heading 8480 — World Customs Organization HS nomenclature

What goes wrong with plastic injection moulding and tooling

Cutting a mould for a product with unproven demand. Validate the market with machined or printed units first.
Not naming the steel grade. A 718H or a P20 mould behaves very differently to a soft prototype tool at 100,000 shots.
Skipping the DFM review. A part designed without draft angles, uniform wall thickness or adequate radii will mould badly or not at all.
Assuming one cavity. Multi-cavity tools multiply output and cost together, and the right answer depends on annual volume, not on the first order.
Forgetting that the tool has a finite shot life and needs maintenance.

Send the requirement and any drawings. You get a supplier shortlist and one landed price, with the cost breakdown shown.