Mixed Container Loading: Consolidating Brands to Cut Freight Cost
How to combine heavy and light FMCG categories into one container, hit the weight and volume limits together, and lower your cost per case.
Freight is charged on the container, not the contents. Every cubic metre you ship empty is money spent on nothing. Yet a great many FMCG containers sail at 70–80% utilisation because the load was assembled as a shopping list rather than planned as a load.
The two limits you are working against
A container has a volume limit and a weight limit, and a well-built load approaches both at the same time. A standard 40ft box offers roughly 67 cubic metres of usable space with a payload limit typically in the region of 26–28 tonnes, subject to the carrier and the road weight rules at each end.
Miss the balance in either direction and you waste money. Load only beverages and you will hit the weight ceiling with a third of the space unused. Load only crisps and paper goods and you will fill the box at half the permitted weight. Either way you paid for a whole container and shipped a partial one.
Knowing which categories are heavy and which are light
A rough mental model for FMCG:
- Dense, weight-limited: beverages, especially glass and large-format PET; liquid sauces and condiments; liquid detergents; canned goods.
- Middling: confectionery, coffee and tea, jarred spreads, dry groceries such as pasta.
- Light, volume-limited: crisps and snacks, nappies and paper products, powdered detergents in cartons, empty-space-heavy packaging generally.
- Compact and high value: skincare and personal care — little weight, little volume, substantial invoice value.
The instinctive combination is dense plus light: beverages with snacks, sauces with nappies. The refinement is adding compact high-value goods, which raise the value of the load without consuming either budget.
Building the load in the right order
A method that works:
- Start with the anchor lines — the products you know will sell and must have. Usually these are your dense, high-turnover beverages or staples.
- Calculate what they consume. Get the gross weight and cubic volume of that block. Now you know how much of each budget remains.
- Fill the remaining volume with light goods until you approach the volume limit.
- Add compact high-value lines to lift the invoice value of the container without disturbing either limit.
- Check both totals against the limits before you confirm, including the road weight restrictions at destination, which are sometimes tighter than the sea leg.
This is also the point to check the landed cost per case — a well-balanced load can move it several percent. Our landed cost guide shows the calculation.
Practical stowage points
- Heavy on the bottom, light on top. Obvious, routinely ignored, and the main cause of crushed cartons.
- Distribute weight evenly across the floor. Concentrating load at one end creates handling problems and can breach axle limits on the road leg.
- Keep heat-sensitive goods away from the walls and roof, where container temperatures peak. Chocolate belongs in the middle of the load.
- Do not mix strong-smelling goods with absorbent ones. Detergents and coffee in the same box is a known way to ruin the coffee.
- Group by destination and customer if the container will be split on arrival — it saves hours at the warehouse.
- Brace and fill voids. Cargo that shifts in transit arrives damaged.
The commercial advantages beyond freight
Consolidating from one supplier does more than fill the box. You get one purchase order rather than five, one set of export documents rather than five, one payment, one shipment to track and one point of contact when something needs resolving. On the customs side, a single entry covering the whole container is materially simpler than co-ordinating several consignments arriving separately.
It also lets you test new lines cheaply. Adding two pallets of an unfamiliar category to a container you were shipping anyway costs very little incremental freight — a far better way to trial a product than committing to a standalone shipment.
When a mixed load is the wrong answer
Consolidation is not universally correct. Keep loads separate when products have very different shelf lives and you would be forced to clear the whole container to reach the short-dated portion; when goods require different temperature handling; when a category needs its own certification or clearance process that would delay the rest; or when one customer's order should not be entangled with another's.
How we approach it
FMCG Depot carries all ten categories in one place specifically so that buyers can build a full, balanced container from a single order. Send us your must-have lines and your destination, and we will come back with a load plan showing weight, volume and utilisation against both limits — plus suggestions for what to add if there is space or payload going spare.
If your volume is not yet at container level, our FCL versus LCL guide covers when groupage remains the better choice.
Frequently asked questions
Roughly 67 cubic metres of usable volume with a payload limit generally around 26–28 tonnes, depending on the carrier and on road weight rules at each end. A well-planned load approaches both limits at the same time.
Pair dense, weight-limited goods such as beverages and liquid sauces with light, volume-hungry goods such as snacks and paper products, then add compact high-value lines like skincare to raise the load's value without using much weight or space.
No — it usually simplifies it. One container means one customs entry and one document set. Each product line still needs its correct HS code, but that is far simpler than clearing several separate consignments.
Yes, and it is one of the cheapest ways to test a line. Adding a pallet or two to a container you are already shipping costs very little in incremental freight.
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