A mixed container is a simple idea: several designs, from several collections, sharing one box. It lets a retailer order two pieces of one design and twenty of another. It also means someone has to work out whether it all fits, and in what order it goes in. That someone is us, but the more you know about how it is worked out, the better your first order will be.
Volume, not weight
A 20 ft container has about 33 cubic metres of space inside, and a 40 ft high-cube about 76. Furniture is bulky for its weight, so a container of it fills by volume long before it gets near the weight limit. Every planning question is therefore a question about cubic metres.
No load uses all of it. Cartons of different sizes never fit together perfectly, and some space goes to the bracing that stops a load shifting at sea. Plan on less than the internal volume, and let the loading plan tell you how much less.
How a carton is measured
Each piece is packed with three centimetres of protection on every face: corner boards, corrugate, and a stretch wrap that goes on last. So a carton is six centimetres larger than the piece in each direction, and its volume is the three carton dimensions multiplied together, in metres.
A sideboard 150 cm long, 40 deep and 80 high, for example, packs into a carton of about 156 × 46 × 86 cm, which is 0.62 cubic metres. Small pieces add up quickly the other way: most of our occasional range packs under 0.4 cubic metres a piece, which is why mirrors, side tables and shallow consoles are what buyers use to fill the gaps.
Some pieces travel in parts. A tall hutch ships as two units, base and top. Vitrines can ship with the glass out, to be glazed on arrival. Where a design ships knocked down, it is assembled and checked here first, then taken apart, with its hardware bagged to the unit rather than to the order.
What goes in first
The container is loaded by hand to a plan drawn before anything moves. A good plan puts the heaviest, strongest cartons on the floor, runs long pieces along the walls, and keeps the smallest pieces back to fill the last gaps.
Every carton on that plan appears on the packing list, and the documents are issued against what actually went in. If a piece is held back at inspection, you see it on paper before the container sails, not when it is opened.
The documents describe what went into the container, not what was ordered. The difference is the point.
What we need from you
To plan a mixed load we need the designs, the quantity of each, the finishes, the container size you have in mind, and the port you want it to sail from: Mundra or Nhava Sheva. The quotation comes back with packed carton sizes and container counts, so you can adjust the mix before any timber is cut.
If the mix leaves space, it is usually filled with a handful of small pieces from the occasional range, which is what that range is for.
Written at the works, Boranada · October 2026
