Pallets and Containers: A Loading Reference for FMCG
Published pallet and container specifications set out in full, the ISPM 15 marking that stops shipments at a frontier, and the one calculation that tells you in advance whether a load will run out of room or run out of weight.
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Space and mass: whichever runs out first ends the load
Every container imposes two separate limits, and no shipment ever reaches both at once. Fill the internal volume while payload remains available and the load has cubed out. Reach the permitted mass while floor or headroom is still visible and it has weighed out. Either way you have bought something you did not use: unused carrying capacity in the first case, unused space in the second.
Which of the two arrives first is not a matter of judgement. It is arithmetic, and you can settle it before anybody builds a pallet. Take the mass you intend to load and divide it by the volume that mass will occupy once it is on pallets and stacked — timber, packaging, void space and all, which is a very different figure from the density of the product itself. Then compare that number with the container's own ratio of permitted payload to internal cube. Cargo below the container's ratio cubes out; cargo above it weighs out. The container ratios are in the second table below and they are far more lopsided than most people assume.
What follows is organised so that the checkable numbers sit in tables and the reasoning sits around them. Every published figure is attributed. What is absent is anything that changes order by order — cases to a layer, pallets to a range, a sensible minimum for a given market. Those follow from the pack format, from the stack height your warehouse accepts and from how the lines you choose balance mass against volume, and they go in writing on the pro-forma.
Specification: EPAL load carriers
European loads are built on the exchangeable pallet pool administered by EPAL, and EPAL publishes the figures a load plan has to respect.
| Load carrier | Footprint | Height | Own weight | Safe working load | Max on bottom pallet when stacked laden |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EPAL 1 (Euro pallet) | 1,200 × 800 mm | 144 mm | approx. 25 kg | 1,500 kg | 5,500 kg |
| EPAL 2 | 1,200 × 1,000 mm | 162 mm | approx. 35 kg | 1,250 kg | 4,250 kg |
| EPAL 3 | 1,200 × 1,000 mm | 144 mm | — | 1,500 kg | — |
| EPAL 6 (half pallet) | 800 × 600 mm | 144 mm | — | 750 kg | — |
The stacking figures in the last column assume a solid, level surface and are as much a warehouse constraint as a shipping one. Check them against your own racking before specifying anything double-stacked.
Two entries in that table quietly consume budget. Look at the height column: on a Euro-pallet load, 144 mm of every column is timber, freight is charged on it, and nothing can be stored in it — roughly six per cent of a standard container's internal height gone before the first case is placed. Then look at the weight column: twenty-five empty Euro pallets already account for something over six hundred kilogrammes of a container's permitted payload.
The EPAL 6 exists for retail presentation rather than for logistics, being sized for the end of a supermarket aisle instead of a racking bay, and it rewrites the layer arithmetic completely. Beyond Europe other footprints dominate; what governs is whatever your own racking, doorways and handling equipment were built around, so state it when you enquire instead of finding out at the point of unloading.
Specification: ISO dry containers
ISO 668 fixes the outside of the series 1 containers used across liner shipping. Inside measurements are a different matter — they shift with manufacturer, build and age — so the internal figures below are the nominal values common to standard dry equipment and not a promise about the unit you will be given.
| 20 ft standard (1CC) | 40 ft standard (1AA) | 40 ft high cube (1AAA) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| External L × W × H per ISO 668 | 6.058 × 2.438 × 2.591 m | 12.192 × 2.438 × 2.591 m | 12.192 × 2.438 × 2.896 m |
| Nominal internal L × W × H | approx. 5.90 × 2.35 × 2.39 m | approx. 12.03 × 2.35 × 2.39 m | approx. 12.03 × 2.35 × 2.70 m |
| Nominal internal cube | approx. 33 m³ | approx. 67 m³ | approx. 76 m³ |
| Typical tare | approx. 2.2–2.4 t | approx. 3.7–3.9 t | approx. 3.9–4.1 t |
| Typical payload where plated at 30,480 kg | approx. 28 t | approx. 26.6 t | approx. 26.4 t |
| Permitted payload per cubic metre | approx. 850 kg/m³ | approx. 395 kg/m³ | approx. 350 kg/m³ |
The mass rating carries some history, which is why older reference tables and newer ones disagree. Twenty-foot units were once rated at 24,000 kg; a 2005 amendment to ISO 668 lifted twenty- and thirty-foot boxes to 30,480 kg, and a further amendment in 2016 allows series 1 containers other than ten-foot units to go as high as 36,000 kg. What the standard permits and what your allocated unit is plated for are separate questions: dry equipment in ordinary liner service is normally certified at 30,480 kg, which is the basis of the payload row above. The authoritative numbers for any given consignment are stamped on that container's CSC safety approval plate, and your carrier publishes internal dimensions by equipment type. Build the plan from those two sources rather than from any general table, this one included.
Reading the two tables against real cargo
The final row of the container table is the one that decides how a range should be assembled. Every cubic metre of a twenty-foot unit comes with roughly 850 kg of carrying allowance behind it. In a forty-foot the same cubic metre carries about 395 kg, and in a high cube about 350 kg. That is why a forty-foot doubles your floor without doubling your weight allowance, why heavy commodities travel in twenties, and why a high cube is a purchase of headroom rather than of tonnage — worthless to a shipment that is already at its mass limit.
Now set consumer goods against those thresholds. Almost the entire category stows well below 350 kg per cubic metre, so almost the entire category cubes out. Crisps and extruded snacks, tissue and kitchen towel, nappies, cereal, confectionery outers, wipes, cartoned cosmetics: all of it is board wrapped around air, and a forty-foot will be packed to the ceiling with over half its payload untouched.
The heavy end is short and predictable. Water and carbonates in PET, anything in glass, cans, cooking oils, liquid laundry and composed sauces all stow densely enough to trip the mass limit while the box still looks half empty. Pairing the two ends is therefore not a stowage trick but a purchasing decision: drinks lines contribute the tonnage and bagged snacks occupy the cube, and one freight bill covers both. Ship bottled water on its own and metres of roof space go to sea empty; ship crisp canisters on their own and the box arrives embarrassingly light. Between those poles, cleaning chemistry in liquid form sits with the drinks on density, whereas nappies and family care rank among the bulkiest freight anybody loads.
One external limit frequently bites before any of this does. Road weight limits at destination are set by national law and are often lower than the container's own rating, so a box filled to its plate may be perfectly legal at sea and impossible to haul from the quay to your building. Establish the road ceiling on your delivery leg first, then plan the load underneath it.
Wood packaging under ISPM 15
Timber crossing a frontier is regulated as a plant health risk, not as packaging. ISPM 15 governs it, and the goods it reaches are pallets, cases, crates, drums, skids and loose dunnage cut from raw wood thicker than 6 mm. Boards manufactured by processes that already destroy pests — plywood, oriented strand board, particleboard, veneer — fall outside it, as do plastic and pressed-fibre pallets.
| Code | Treatment | Requirement |
|---|---|---|
| HT | Conventional heat treatment | Wood core held at a minimum of 56 °C for at least 30 continuous minutes |
| DH | Dielectric heating | Minimum core temperature of 60 °C for 30 continuous minutes |
| MB | Methyl bromide fumigation | Fumigation to the standard's schedule |
| DB | Debarked | A precondition of treatment; shown on some marks, implicit on the rest |
The compliance mark itself is branded or stencilled straight onto the timber and carries four elements: the IPPC symbol, the two-letter ISO code for the treating country, the unique code that country's national plant protection organisation has assigned to the producer or treatment provider, and the treatment code from the table above. Because the mark lives on the wood rather than in a folder, verification is visual and has to happen on the pallets that are actually going under your cargo.
For European shipments the pallet standard usually resolves this by itself. EPAL records that Euro pallets produced from the start of 2010 onwards have been heat treated to ISPM 15, identifies the branding on the two centre blocks along the long sides as where to look for it, and rules methyl bromide out on its own pallets. Two checks stay with you: confirm the branding is present and readable on the pallets in front of you, and confirm what your destination's plant health inspectorate looks for, because enforcement practice varies a great deal even where the standard does not.
Getting pallets onto the floor
Width is the binding dimension, and it catches people out. With roughly 2.35 m to play with inside, two Euro pallets laid across their 1,200 mm edge need 2,400 mm and simply will not fit; laid across their 800 mm edge they need 1,600 mm and squander three-quarters of a metre. Efficient patterns therefore alternate orientation from row to row so that each row absorbs the dead space left by the one before it.
Loaded that way, with nothing hanging over an edge, the standard single floor tier comes to 11 Euro pallets in a twenty-foot unit and 24 to 25 in a forty-foot. Switch to the 1,200 × 1,000 mm footprint and the figures fall to roughly 10 and 20 to 21 — fewer positions, each with a bigger deck to fill. Read those as floor geometry rather than as a quotation. What your particular order fills depends on pack formats, stack height and available allocation, and that goes on the pro-forma.
The vertical calculation defeats more load plans than the horizontal one. Start from the internal height, subtract the 144 mm the pallet deck itself occupies, then subtract whatever clearance your loading crew needs to set the top tier down without scraping it along the roof. On standard-height equipment that leaves a little over 2.2 m to work in; a high cube adds roughly another 300 mm. The layer count is derived from that residual figure, never from the container height.
Last, measure the doorway. The aperture and the internal width are two different numbers, and a stowage pattern that works across the floor is academic if the final row will not pass the door posts. Any supplier quoting a universal pallet count is averaging somebody else's fleet; the number you can rely on is the one you derive from your carrier's specification for the equipment type on your own booking, together with confirmed pallet dimensions from the shipper.
Layer discipline, and the three ways a stack fails
Pallets get built in layers for two reasons: layers are countable, and layers are stable. Each one is a pattern of cases covering as much of the deck as the case dimensions permit, and the number of them is capped by the usable stack height and by how much compression the bottom case will take before it starts to deform.
Almost all the practical guidance follows from three failure modes.
- An uneven top surface. If a layer does not present a flat, continuous bed, the tier above cannot settle onto it evenly and the load starts to work loose in transit. Uniform layer patterns are worth more than clever ones.
- A high centre of gravity. Heavy cases stowed above light ones invite the whole column to shift on a swell or during a crane lift. Density goes at the bottom, without exception.
- Overhang. Cartons carry load through their vertical corners, so any case whose corner sits proud of the deck edge is no longer carrying anything, and every layer above it inherits the deficit. Build inside the footprint, always.
Between the two stacking patterns, aligning cases corner over corner keeps compression strength intact and suits tall columns of light cartons; bonding the layers by rotating cases sacrifices some of that strength in exchange for resistance to sliding, and slip sheets recover part of the difference. The case manufacturer's own compression specification is the honest place to start.
Mixed pallets carrying several variants, brands or categories on one deck take longer to build and longer to check in, and they are the reason a buyer who cannot absorb a full pallet of every line can still fill a box. Where the quantities permit, build in complete layers, label every pallet with its actual contents, and allow for slower goods-in at your end.
Two cargo properties change the plan rather than the pattern. Condensation attacks packaging rather than product: humid air loaded in a temperate port meets chilled steel at sea, and whatever forms on the roof descends onto the top tier, which is the argument for loading dry, stowing dry and using desiccant. And aerosols, together with parts of a cleaning range, are classified as dangerous goods by the IMDG Code at sea and by ADR on the road, which alters segregation inside the box, the paperwork, and occasionally the carrier. Neither is a barrier; both are far cheaper to resolve while the order list is still open. The consolidation and freight page covers how categories are combined and routed on a live shipment.
Where the load plan shows up in your unit cost
A full container is priced as a container. Whatever you paid for the box and its terminal charges, that sum is fixed, so the freight carried by each saleable unit is simply that sum divided by the number of units aboard. Build the load badly and the numerator does not move — the denominator falls, and every unit gets more expensive.
Part-loads behave differently, and understanding how is what tells you when to stop using them. Groupage rates are normally struck on volume or weight, whichever produces the larger figure, so a bulky light pallet and a compact heavy one can end up costing the same to move. That mechanism is why groupage seldom competes with a full box on cost per unit, and why the step up to containers usually pays for itself as soon as a range is broad enough to fill one.
Two secondary effects are easy to leave out of the comparison. Put several categories into one box and you handle a single transport document, a single customs entry and a single arrival; split them and all three multiply. And the delivery term determines which of these costs the seller's figure has already absorbed and which will reach you on a separate invoice, as well as shaping the value your duty is assessed against — so the term, the tariff treatment and the load plan belong in the same conversation. The Incoterms 2020 reference sets out that division rule by rule.
Briefing us so a plan can be built
A load plan can only be as good as what it is given. Sending these seven lines with an enquiry removes most of the correspondence and produces a quotation you can actually compare against another one.
- Where it is going — named port or door address — and which delivery term to price on.
- Which equipment you can physically receive, including whether your route and your delivery point can handle a high cube.
- The lines you are interested in, with an indicative split, so that the mass-to-volume balance can be tested before anything is costed.
- Your pallet specification: footprint, height limit, gross weight limit, and whether pallets are one-way or exchanged.
- Any stack-height or racking restriction at your own warehouse.
- Destination labelling or language requirements, and which party applies them.
- Whether part-layers on mixed pallets are acceptable or whole layers are required.
Then require the same precision coming back, on the pro-forma rather than in correspondence: pallet count, cases per layer and per pallet, net and gross weights, total cube, and photographs of the finished pallets taken before the doors are closed. The gateway a box sails from moves cost and transit as much as the stowage does, and the comparison of Valencia and Barcelona deals with that side of it. When a range is taking shape, work from the export catalogue.
Sources. Footprints, heights, unladen weights, working loads, stacking limits and heat treatment for pallets: EPAL load-carrier specifications, epal-pallets.org. Container external dimensions and mass ratings: ISO 668, series 1 freight containers. Internal dimensions, tare weights and payloads are nominal values for standard dry equipment; the CSC safety approval plate on your allocated unit and your carrier's published equipment specification are authoritative. Treatment and marking of wood packaging: ISPM 15, under the International Plant Protection Convention. Verified August 2026.