Transport options, palletizing, and customs

If you followed the order of the articles step-by-step, this is the final major category of consideration when it comes to getting your private label product started.

In it, it’ll be hard to keep a unified structure that naturally flows from paragraph to paragraph due to the nature of the topic: the plethora of miscellaneous factors that you need to keep in mind when you’ve gotten the rest of the process sort and have started thinking about logistics.

These include decisions such as proper transport mode and partner, the type of pallets to use, pallet structure, pallet protection, and other easy-to-forget, but important elements of the process of receiving your goods.

Transport mode

Chris from AMATA Ltd. — Hi, I’m Chris. I am the Product Manager at our family business. I’ve expedited thousands upon thousands of pallets.

Let’s start with the obvious: transport mode.

That is, once your products are manufactured, you’ll need to figure out a way to have them delivered to you or your distributor/fulfillment partner. Thankfully, this is a fairly obvious decision.

Land

Land-based transport, usually trucks, is how most of commerce happens. The size of these trucks differs, and you should hire one that is appropriately sized. In Europe, the biggest-baddest trucks can hold up to 32 EUR pallets. Online, you’ll often see it mentioned that, theoretically, the max is 33 pallets, but the reality is that due to sagging, goods are usually slightly bigger than their pallet bases, making this incredibly hard to achieve. Smaller trucks can carry as little as EUR 5 pallets.

It’s important to keep in mind that EUR pallets have a maximum load capacity. This has much less to do with their structural integrity (they can handle up to 1,500kg/3,300lbs), and more to do with the maximum carrying capacity of the trucks transporting them. That’s usually capped at around 40 tons (~88,000lbs), which sounds like a lot, but it includes the weight of the truck itself. This typically leaves about 22,000 to 25,000kg (48,500-55,115lbs) for your goods.

You don’t need a calculator to see that you can’t both load 32 pallets and have them loaded to the max carrying capacity of even the largest trucks. For example, at most, we usually load around 1440pcs of 450-500ml (15-17fl oz) bottled beverages.

If your goods are light, instead, then weight is less of a concern and you’re mostly thinking about volume. A standard truck trailer in the EU is around 13.6m long and 2.45m high (that’s 44.62ft and 8ft, respectively). This means you can fit very tall, lightweight pallets inside the trailer, so long as they’re properly secured and the points of loading/unloading can accommodate that height.

Sea

Depending on your specific context, sea-based transport might be the better option, or even the only sensible option.

A generally cheaper mode of transport, sea transit is most cost-effective as distance increases. There are two main types of shipping containers: 20ft and 40ft. The former can fit around 11 EUR pallets, while the latter can accommodate up to 23.

The biggest drawback to sea shipments is the length of the journey—if your order is time-sensitive and land transit is an option, it might not be worth the wait. Additionally, keep in mind that if you’re located far from the nearest major port, you’ll incur extra costs as the container will have to be loaded on a truck that finishes the last leg of the delivery.

Air

For fast-moving goods such as beverages and supplements, air transit is rarely a sensible choice. The reason, as you probably have guessed, has to do with the much, much higher cost per unit shipped.

This is not to say that air freight is never an option to consider. Scheduling errors do happen, surprise events do occur, and so sometimes, you just need at least a portion of your goods delivered yesterday, not tomorrow. I know because we’ve had this happen, where a client suddenly gets a chance to present a product at an event, or a possible distribution partner, and the extra cost is well worth the potential return.

AMATA Ltd. has shipped to 3 continents as of this writing, using all three of the aforementioned transit modes. Except rail. I’d really like to do rail one day, so hit me up if you’ve cooked up something that can make use of trains. Trains are awesome.

Either way, in keeping the spirit of our private label offering, we let our private label partners decide on how to approach this. You can either handle the nitty-gritty of transit yourself, or you can ask us to do it in your stead. Since it’s a service outside of the scope of what we produce at AMATA, we do not seek to take a cut.

The importance of a good pallet and palletizing technique

Palletizing is the act of loading and securing a pallet of goods. It sounds simple—you just put the goods on a pallet—but there are a few tricks and tips employed here that can save you a considerable amount of headache down the line.

Cost

First and foremost: cost. If you’re looking to cut any fat, you can choose to use what we call returnable pallets. This is very common in the industry, and the point is that while pallets are not super-duper expensive, they still cost something, and if you’re shipping a lot of product, it starts to add up. To control for this, it’s common practice for the sender to be reimbursed with pallets. In other words, if you send 10 pallets worth of goods to a client, you’re asking him to return 10 pallets, ideally in decent condition, back to you.

Obviously, the above is not always possible, especially if there will be no return journey. In those cases, you can choose between used or brand new pallets, with cost respectively changing. Depending on a number of factors, you might be asked by the distributors or their clients to use new pallets, in which case you just eat the cost and move on. If not, you can choose to save a buck.

Palletizing

Image of a properly palletized pallet of goods, featuring edge guards from compressed carton, a carton lid on top, and a shiny new EUR pallet base. — An example of a pallet with most bells and whistles: edge guards from compressed carton, a carton lid on top to protect from the elements and dirt, fresh EUR pallet base.

Secondly, as mentioned, good palletizing can save you a lot of grief down the line. Few things are more unpleasant than receiving goods that have been trashed during transit—whether due to bad roads, long treks, or less than careful drivers and loading equipment staff. To offset this, at least partially, you have several options.

Pallet edge-guards are one such choice. These are made out of compressed carton and added to the four edges of your pallet to hopefully prevent product breakage/deformation during transit, loading and unloading, or even warehousing. If you have to control for costs, you can forgo the compressed carton and just use normal or no carton.

Whilst still on the topic of carton, it’s a good idea to consider whether you need a carton lid on your pallet. This will help prevent the goods below from becoming dirty with dust and other contaminants that can impact their on-shelf appeal, and in some cases even cover for the inevitable mistakes that happen in logistics. It’s not once or twice that customers have complained about soaking wet goods because the logistics company/distributor decided to leave the pallets outside. And then it rained.

Another option is anti-slip paper. As the name implies, a sheet of this specialty paper is laid on every level of your pallet with the aim of preventing the boxes or shrink-packed beverages from moving. This helps prevent utter chaos from unfolding in the trailer of the truck on the off chance that emergency braking takes place at any point during transit.

Pallet wrap is another important consideration, and quite a cheap improvement to make to further insure your goods. Proper pallet wrapping (it’s done with cling style foil) isn’t just about the amount of material used, but also the available techniques available to your manufacturer. For example, the points of highest potential roll can be wrapped tightly, as if a rope, to securely restrict movement from happening. If your goods require good ventilation, you can also ask your manufacturer about so-called “aero foil”, which features holes that allow for proper aeration.

Loading layout

Pallet loading configuration is the final consideration I’ll mention here. In simpler terms, this refers to the possible loading layouts available for your product on a given pallet.

For an example with boxes, for a tight fit, your manufacturer might have to position them in a specific way to achieve the best possible end result. In reality, it might mean that one or two rows of the boxes are oriented differently from the rest. Your manufacturer will usually figure this out, but it’s not a bad idea to ensure that they’re being diligent. Empty spaces on a pallet is the enemy—you should seek out a matrix that allows you to fit as much as the space allows for, without leaving any gaps. If that proves impossible due to the dimensions of your product, these gaps should be filled with something like carton in order to prevent layout shift during transit.

Customs, production date stamping, and others

At this point, you should be ready to initiate shipping.

However, the powers that be, don’t just let you sneak goods onto markets. They have to go through customs first.

Customs

I won’t lie to you: dealing with customs, customs agents, and companies that do customs representation is among the most annoying parts of the shipping process, and the hardest to plan for. That’s because customs agents can delay entry of goods based on just a comically long list of reasons.

To avoid this, we’ve found that sticking with trusted customs representation agents is a cost we’re willing to pay for the peace of mind. Of course, if you’re really eager, you can take this on your shoulders and jump head first into the world of customs’ inner-workings and nobody can stop you. My advice? Both manufacturer and private label client are better served by delegating this task and focusing their full attention on other, better ROI activities.

Date stamping

We’re getting into some real misc. stuff now, but yes, you should consider the format under which you’d like to date-stamp your products.

You should consider the space for printing during your design process. It is best practice to leave significantly more space than required for the actual print to ensure sufficient buffer space.

The common practice is for manufacturers to stamp your products with two key components: production date (sometimes printed as Lxxxxxx, so an L210524 marking would be a production date of 21.05.24) and best by date. A cool addition to that is to stamp the specific time of production (hour, minute, second) in addition. This can help manufacturers with a good CCTV setup to isolate footage of the production process to a specific time, should QA issues with a particular portion of a batch arise.

We do this at AMATA. Every portion of the production line is recorded with high-def cameras to ensure that we can track down issues if we need to. This approach allows us to isolate specific sections of a production batch to better understand why a negative event occurred.

Invoices, shipping lists, accompanying documents

Lastly, keep in mind that all goods in most of the Western world are required to carry a bunch of documents when in transit. This includes a shipping list, invoice, CMR, CoAs and CoOs, and others.

Keeping on top of this will ensure that your goods are delivered promptly and without needless hassle and possible fines.

A common request we get from private label clients is to obfuscate the cost of the goods in the invoice if they’re being directly shipped to a supplier with whom they have a deal with. This is done to preserve their negotiating power since if the distributor knows your exact cost, they can pressure you into discounts.

Don’t worry. While I won’t go into details as to how this is achievable, least because it differs on a case-by-case basis, it is perfectly within the law and you do not have to engage in or abet anything unsavory in order to protect a trade secret like that.

If you’re reading this, congrats on your attention-span, that’s impressive! Hopefully, this introduction into the various misc. decisions relating to shipping, palletizing, customs, and other factors requiring your attention before you get your product on the market, has been of some use to you.

Now that you’ve got the fundamentals covered, perhaps it’s time to shoot us a message? Whether it’s Text, Viber, WhatsApp, E-mail or a call, that’s fine—feel free to pick the least personally existential dread-y way to get in touch and we’ll oblige.