Pieces per kilogram by cube size: the reference table

By Mohamad Sinno, Charcoal Expert · 28 August 2026

Piece counts are the most-quoted number in this product and the least comparable. Not because anyone is lying — because a count is a ratio, and hardly anybody publishes the other half of it.

The short answer

A kilogram holds 72 cubes at 25 mm, 64 at 26 mm and 54 at 27 mm; the full cube range, 22 mm up to 28 mm, is in the table below alongside every other shape we cut. Those are nominal packing counts taken at the factory as the cartons fill — first-party, and still nominal, because a count moves with density and moisture. Every one of them assumes the count is per kilogram, which is the assumption that breaks when you compare two suppliers.

Every shape and size we make

Cube counts run in the same order as the sizes beside them. Two shapes carry a recorded count — the cube and the lotus — and the rest say "on request" because the factory has not recorded a nominal count for them. That is a different statement from a missing number: ask for the size you intend to buy and it comes back measured against that size. What you will not find here is a count copied across from a neighbouring shape, which would be a guess wearing a table cell.

Box maths in one step

Every shape we make packs into the same 10 kg net master carton, which is what lets one multiplication answer most questions. Pieces per carton is the count times ten: a 25 mm cube carton holds about 720 pieces. Going the other way, grams per piece is a thousand divided by the count — about 13.9 g at 25 mm. Both are arithmetic on the published count rather than weighings, and they inherit whatever the count's own accuracy is.

A count means nothing without its weight base

This is the part worth taking away. A piece count is only comparable against a stated weight, and the market states it inconsistently — sometimes on the same page. One large retailer's charcoal category, read in August 2026, describes cubes as "each 1kg box includes 72 cubes" and flats as "each 1kg box includes 108" — both explicit, both usable. A few products further down, cubettes "contain 120 pieces and weigh just over 1kg", and a second flats product simply "includes 120 flat charcoal pieces" with no weight given anywhere.

So on one retailer's page, "120 pieces" means two different products at two different weights, one of which is not a kilogram and one of which is unstated. Line those up against a 108 and a 72 and the numbers look like a spectrum of density when they are really a spectrum of packaging. Ask what the count is a count of before you compare two suppliers, and put the weight base rather than the piece count in your own box copy if you want it to survive a change of supplier.

Why the count moves at all

Charcoal sells by weight and gets counted by pieces, and those two only line up if every piece weighs the same. They do not, quite. A briquette's mass at a fixed size is set by its density and by how much moisture it is carrying when it goes into the box, and both are live variables rather than constants — which is why the honest word for any of these figures is nominal.

Both are controlled rather than left alone. Density is checked at extrusion, again at shape forming, again at packing, and once more on a random audit of packed cartons; moisture is checked at those same points plus grinding and oven drying. Moisture in particular carries three different numbers here that are routinely confused: the drying stage is run to 2-3% at stage exit, the material re-equilibrates to 4-6% at packaging, and the grade ceilings quoted on specification sheets are different again. A count taken on material at the low end of that band is not the same count as one taken at the high end. How those checks are documented per batch is on batch consistency, and what a certificate actually reports is on how to read a COA.

The same arithmetic at container scale

Nobody writes this layer down, and it is the one a distributor actually needs. A 20 ft of 25 mm cube is 20 tonnes in 2,000 master cartons, so it carries roughly 1,440,000 individual briquettes. A 40 ft at 26.5 tonnes and 2,650 cartons carries roughly 1,908,000. Both are computed from the carton counts and the published per-kilogram figure — not counted, and not to be quoted to three significant figures at a customs desk.

It is still the number that tells you whether a container covers a season. Retail boxes and pallet configuration sit outside this page; what changes the carton count is the shape you load, and that is set out shape by shape on payload by shape. If you are choosing between the two most common cubes, the count difference and what it does to a box is on cube 25 mm vs 26 mm. The shapes these counts belong to are compared, format against format, in shisha charcoal shapes and sizes: the catalogue, compared.