OEM packaging formats and weights: choosing your box lineup
By Mohamad Sinno, Charcoal Expert ·
Ask AI for an importer brief:
The short answer
Launch with one format, and make it the 1 kg box. Not because the others are worse, but because the minimum is two tonnes per SKU and it counts packaging variants rather than designs — so a three-format lineup costs six tonnes of your container before it has told you anything about what your market buys.
The formats below are what we make. Three of them are held in stock under our own house designs, which means they carry no print step at all; the rest are printed to your artwork. Where we have recorded a dimension it is in the tables. Where we have not, the cell says so rather than carrying a number we would have had to derive.
The format comparison
| Format | Available from stock? | Recorded dimensions | Channel fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 kg inner box | Coco Reina, Coco Lux, Coco Fire — cube 25 and cube 26 | Recorded per cube size, below | The default retail and lounge unit, and the one every published piece count assumes. |
| 500 g inner box | Coco Reina, Coco Lux, Coco Fire — cube 25 and cube 26 | Not recorded — ask the export desk | Retail shelves where a kilogram is too much money in one hand. |
| 250 g inner box | Own design only | Not recorded — ask the export desk | A trial or gift size. A competitor page dated 17 March 2026 calls it popular in Russia and Europe; that is their observation of their market, not our sales data. |
| Plain unbranded box | Held in stock | As the 1 kg box | You label after import. No print step and no design cycle. |
| Master carton | Branded masters match the three house designs | Four cube configurations recorded, below | 10 kg net on every shape, with a 20 kg master for cube 28. |
Two of those cells are deliberately empty, and the emptiness is the point. We publish inner-box dimensions for the 1 kg box and master-carton dimensions for four cube configurations. The 500 g box and the branded masters that match the house designs are made and shipped, but their dimensions are not written down anywhere we can cite, so they are not written down here either. Halving the 1 kg figures would produce a plausible number and a wrong one, because a half-weight box is not a half-volume box.
The dimensions we do publish
The 1 kg inner box changes shape with the cube inside it, which is why there is no single answer to "how big is your box".
| Cube size | 1 kg inner box, mm |
|---|---|
| 22 mm | 97 × 81 × 186 |
| 25 mm | 105 × 80 × 157 |
| 26 mm | 111 × 111 × 111 |
| 27 mm | 170 × 88 × 88 |
| 28 mm | 119 × 88 × 120 |
Master cartons, in millimetres: cube 25 — 415 × 217 × 164 · cube 26 — 560 × 225 × 115 · cube 28 at 20 kg — 478 × 258 × 281 · cube 28 at 10 kg — 478 × 258 × 90. The inner box is duplex 250 gsm over E-flute, varnished, printed CMYK; the master is kraft K150/M125K150, single-wall B-flute, up to three print colours. Every one of those cartons is 10 kg net except the cube-28 master built for 20 kg.
Those dimensions are where a dieline starts, and the format you pick here decides two things further down the line: what the artwork file and the regulatory panel have to contain, and what gets checked once the boxes are printed.
What the format does to container yield
Less than most buyers expect, and this is worth being precise about. Payload is set by shape and cube size, not by the retail box, because a 20 ft cubes out before it weighs out — it fills by volume, and the volume is the briquettes.
| Shape / size | 20 ft | 40 ft |
|---|---|---|
| Cube 25 mm, 26 mm | 20 t | 26.5 t |
| Cube 27 mm, 28 mm | 19.5 t | 26.5 t |
| Hexagonal, stix, octagonal, flat/brix | 18.5 t | 26.5 t |
What the format changes is the carton count and the handling at the far end. At 10 kg net per master the arithmetic from payload to cartons is the same whatever inner box sits inside, so a 500 g lineup does not cost you tonnes — it costs you twice as many retail units to pick, price and put on a shelf. Dome, lotus, cube-with-hole and the 22 mm cube carry no measured payload row at all and are absent from that table on purpose; ask before you plan a container around one.
A sane first lineup
One format, one cube size, one design. If the market is lounges, that is the 1 kg box in the cube your customers already burn. If it is retail shelves, it is still the 1 kg box until you have a reason from your own sell-through to add the 500 g beside it — and by then the reason will be a number rather than a guess.
For what the market carries: a US wholesaler's undated category page lists 72 cubes in a 1 kg box, 108 flats in a 1 kg box, an oversized 27 mm format at 64 pieces, and twelve-box master cases — a useful picture of what actually reaches a shelf, though it is one retailer and it carries no date. Two competitor supplier pages, dated 17 March 2026 and 6 January 2023, publish inner ranges from 250 g to 3 kg and masters from 5 to 20 kg. Those are their lineups, dated as theirs. Ours is narrower on purpose, and the per-SKU arithmetic is why.
Questions buyers ask
Which format should a first container be?
One. Almost always the 1 kg box, in whichever cube size your market already burns. The minimum is two tonnes per SKU and it counts sizes and packaging variants, not logos, so a lineup of three formats is three minimums before you have sold anything. Add the second format when the first one runs out, not before.
What size is the 500 g box?
We have not recorded it. The dimensions we publish are for the 1 kg inner box by cube size and for four master-carton configurations, and the 500 g box is not among them. Ask the export desk rather than scaling the 1 kg figures — a half-weight box is not a half-volume box, and the piece layout inside it is what sets the dimensions.
Does the box size change how much fits in a container?
Not directly — payload is set by shape and cube size, because a 20 ft cubes out before it weighs out. What the format changes is the carton count and therefore the handling, and the master carton is 10 kg net on every shape, so the arithmetic from payload to cartons is the same regardless of which inner box sits inside it.
Can I mix formats in one container?
Yes, subject to the two-tonne minimum on each. That is the whole constraint: a container is a budget of SKUs, and every format you add spends two tonnes of it before it earns anything.
Formats, materials and recorded dimensions accurate as of September 2026. Market conventions are dated where cited and belong to their sources, never to us.
Size a lineup against your shelf
Tell the export desk the channel and the cube size, and you will get the box dimensions for that combination — including the ones this page does not publish, which exist as answers even where they are not written down.