Evian — Wholesale Supply

Why a water container runs out of weight before it runs out of space

This is the single most useful thing to understand about bottled-water export, and it is the point most supplier pages skip. Nearly every other beverage category — cans, snacks, confectionery — fills the cube of a 20ft or 40ft container long before it reaches the payload limit. Water does the reverse. A pallet of PET water is dense, so a full container of water reaches its maximum permitted payload with floor space still visible, and the 40ft box that looks like the obvious choice frequently carries no more product than a 20ft one because the limit is mass, not volume. Everything follows from that. Pallet height is set by weight rather than by the door aperture. Double-stacking is often not available. The road leg at each end is governed by truck and axle weight limits that may be stricter than the sea leg. And the verified gross mass of each packed container has to be declared before it can be loaded onto the vessel, so the figure has to be right at the point of booking, not discovered at the terminal.

We plan water loads to the weight limit first and the floor plan second. The pallet configuration, the number of pallets per container, the gross weight per pallet and the resulting payload are set against the actual formats you order and confirmed in writing on the pro-forma. We publish no standing figures for those, because they change with format, pallet base and packaging, and a stated weight that turns out to be wrong is a rejected booking rather than a rounding error.

EXW Antwerp, FOB or CIF: who carries the weight problem

The Incoterm decides who owns the planning above. On EXW Antwerp you take the goods at our loading point and your forwarder solves the weight arithmetic, the road leg and the verified gross mass declaration — which suits an experienced importer with an established forwarder and usually prices best. On FOB we deliver into the port and load the vessel. On CIF or DAP we carry the freight, and the weight-limited container is our problem to solve rather than yours, priced in from the start. Buyers frequently compare an EXW figure from one supplier against a CIF figure from another and conclude the first is cheaper, when on a dense cargo like water the freight component is precisely where the difference sits. Ask for the terms you actually trade on and we will restate the same offer under each one.

Documentation and provenance handled

Because premium water trades on authenticity, every consignment is verifiably genuine and fully documented.

• 100% authentic, EU-sourced product in original packaging
• Retail PET and HoReCa glass formats in one consolidated load
• Case, pallet or full container load quantities
• EUR.1 movement certificates and Certificates of Origin
• EXW, FOB, CIF and DAP Incoterms via Antwerp and Rotterdam

Water is dense but low in value per kilo, which is why buyers rarely ship it alone. The lines most often weighed against it for the same shelf and the same delivery run are mainstream soft drinks, so it is worth pricing them in the same enquiry — accounts commonly source Pepsi in bulk to carry the volume tier, then source Red Bull in bulk to complete the chiller with a high-value impulse line. It is also worth reviewing our FMCG export documentation checklist before a first shipment.

A weight-limited container has spare floor space by definition, and that space is free to fill with something light. Buyers use it for ambient grocery and confectionery — Nutella wholesale supply is a common pairing — which turns unusable volume into saleable stock under one booking and one document set. Tell us the whole basket at enquiry and we will build the load around the weight limit.

If you are still deciding which waters and drinks the listing should carry, our guide to the top beverage brands for distribution is a reasonable place to benchmark it.