Somewhere between sample approval and tooling sign-off, someone has to answer an unglamorous question: how many units land in a 40HQ, and what does that do to cost per unit? For folding camping furniture the answer is settled at the carton drawing stage, and by then the design decisions driving it are already frozen.
Here is the arithmetic we run with clients before tooling, the caveats that make the textbook numbers wrong, and the design levers that actually move the figure.
The first thing to understand: you are volume-limited
Dense goods such as tiles or machinery fill a container’s payload long before its cube. Foldable outdoor furniture almost never does. A quad-fold camping chair might weigh 3 kg, a lightweight aluminium folding table 6 or 7 kg. You will run out of cubic metres with the payload barely a quarter used.
The practical consequence is that packed dimensions, not product weight, drive your shipping cost per unit. Shaving 200 g off a frame is a marketing line. Shaving 2 cm off a carton’s shortest dimension is money, on every container, for the life of the product.
What actually fits in a box
Nominal internal volume is what the shipping line publishes. Loadable volume is what you get once cartons stop tessellating, the door end refuses a full column, and someone insists on pallets. Plan at 85–90% of nominal.
| Container | Internal dimensions (approx.) | Nominal volume | Realistic loadable | Typical use for folding furniture |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20GP | 5.90 × 2.35 × 2.39 m | ~33 m³ | 28–30 m³ | Trial orders, first production runs, accessory top-ups |
| 40GP | 12.03 × 2.35 × 2.39 m | ~67 m³ | 57–60 m³ | Rarely the right choice unless the lane prices it below 40HQ |
| 40HQ | 12.03 × 2.35 × 2.69 m | ~76 m³ | 65–68 m³ | The default for chairs, tables and mixed loads |
| 45HQ | 13.55 × 2.35 × 2.69 m | ~86 m³ | 73–77 m³ | Useful where available, but equipment supply is patchy |
The extra 30 cm of internal height in a 40HQ is worth roughly 9 m³ over a 40GP for the same floor slot, which is why it is the working default here.
The arithmetic, step by step
Five steps, in this order. Do not skip step one: carton outer dimensions include the corrugated wall, and most mistakes we see come from someone quoting the product’s folded size instead.
- Carton outer dimensions in metres (L × W × H).
- Carton CBM = L × W × H.
- Units per carton, as packed.
- CBM per unit = carton CBM ÷ units per carton.
- Units per container = realistic loadable volume ÷ CBM per unit.
Worked example: a folding camping chair
Take a quad-fold chair with armrests, packed two to a master carton, carton outer 92 × 44 × 22 cm.
- Carton CBM = 0.92 × 0.44 × 0.22 = 0.0891 m³
- CBM per unit = 0.0891 ÷ 2 = 0.0445 m³
- Cartons in a 40HQ at 67 m³ loadable = 67 ÷ 0.0891 ≈ 752 cartons
- Units = 752 × 2 ≈ 1,500 chairs
Now the weight check. At roughly 7.5 kg gross per carton, that load is about 5,600 kg against a 40HQ payload of well over 25,000 kg. You are using around a fifth of the permitted weight and all of the space. Volume-limited, confirmed.
Worked example: a folding table
An aluminium X-frame table packed two per carton, carton outer 92 × 62 × 25 cm.
- Carton CBM = 0.92 × 0.62 × 0.25 = 0.1426 m³
- CBM per unit = 0.0713 m³
- Cartons in a 40HQ = 67 ÷ 0.1426 ≈ 470 cartons, or about 940 tables
A table like our X-Frame Folding Picnic Table lives or dies on that 25 cm dimension, because it is the one the fold geometry controls. Compare that with the Compact Folding Stool, where the packed envelope is small enough that cartons of six or eight are normal and CBM per unit drops by an order of magnitude.
Floor-loaded or palletised
Palletising costs roughly 10–15% of usable volume. A 150 mm pallet deck removes about 5.5% of the 2.69 m internal height straight away; the rest disappears into footprint mismatch, since a 1200 × 1000 mm pallet rarely matches a furniture carton’s plan dimensions without gaps.
Run the chair example again at 58 m³ instead of 67 m³ and you get roughly 1,300 chairs instead of 1,500. Two hundred units of capacity, gone, on every container.
Whether that is acceptable is not a factory decision. Some distribution centres refuse floor-loaded containers outright, or bill back the destuffing labour; others palletise inbound happily. What matters is deciding before the carton is drawn, because a carton designed to pallet cleanly is a different carton from one designed to fill a floor-loaded 40HQ.
Design levers that move CBM
By the time you are optimising the carton, most of the volume is already determined by the product. The levers worth arguing about, roughly in order of impact:
- Fold geometry. A chair that folds along two axes packs into a slim rectangle. One that folds along a single axis packs into a long triangle, and triangles waste space in cartons.
- Detachable armrests. Armrests are usually the widest point of a folded chair. Making them removable, or hinging them inward, can take several centimetres off the carton width.
- Leg nesting. Legs that nest or fold flat against the frame let you pack alternating units head-to-toe. This is the most common source of an extra unit per carton.
- Roll versus panel table tops. A slat top that rolls packs thinner than a rigid panel folding in half, but rolls need a supporting core and behave differently under stack load. Our folding table range includes both approaches for this reason.
- Wheeled products. Anything with wheels, such as a Folding Camping Wagon, carries an irreducible volume penalty because wheels do not fold. Detachable wheels earn the extra assembly step at volume.
Master carton, inner box, retail box
Three different packs, three different CBM figures for the same product:
- Bulk master carton. Units packed directly into corrugated with dividers or poly. Lowest CBM per unit, but nothing inside is shelf-presentable.
- Inner box inside a master carton. Each unit in a plain inner, several inners per master. Adds board thickness on six faces per unit.
- Single-unit retail box. Printed, sized for shelf or e-commerce presentation, often with void space for graphics. This can inflate CBM per unit by 15–25% against the bulk pack.
None is wrong; they serve different channels. But a brand quoting a contract-pack CBM and then requesting retail boxes at PO stage will find the container count has changed. If your programme mixes channels, specify both packs at the drawing stage and plan the container on the retail figure. For e-commerce we work to cartons planned around your channel’s size limits, which sometimes means a lower units-per-carton count than pure cube efficiency would suggest.
Mixed loads
Few brands order a clean container of one SKU. The usual problem is a chair programme filling 48 m³ and a container wanting 67 m³. Combining categories fixes that: chairs fill the long floor runs, tables stack against the walls, and small dense items such as stools, bags and accessories fill the door end and the gaps above the last row.
This is where a factory covering several categories genuinely helps. A combined set such as the 4-Person Folding Table & Bench Set ships as one carton family rather than as separate consignments, and one loading plan beats coordinating three of them.
Practical warnings
- Stack height and crush. Cartons at the bottom of a 2.6 m stack carry a real load. Specify board grade against the actual stack height, and allow for the strength corrugated loses in humid ocean transit.
- Carton bulge. A soft-goods carton packed to nominal dimensions will bulge 5–10 mm per face once sealed. Plan the loading at bulged dimensions or the last row will not go in.
- Two different weight limits. The container has a payload rating; the road leg at destination has its own gross combination weight limit, often stricter and varying by country and state. A load that is legal on the water can be illegal on the motorway.
- Measure the real carton. Take CBM from a sealed production carton, not from a CAD drawing. The difference is routinely 3–5%, always in the wrong direction.
If you have a folded-dimension target or a container count you need to hit, send your drawing or spec to our engineering team and we will run the carton and loading maths against it, with units-per-container figures for each carton option, before tooling is committed.
Frequently asked questions
How many camping chairs fit in a 40HQ container?
It depends entirely on the folded envelope, but a typical quad-fold chair packed two to a master carton at around 0.089 CBM per carton gives roughly 1,500 chairs floor-loaded in a 40HQ. Palletising the same load drops that to about 1,300. Slim-folding or armless designs go higher; wide-armrest recliners considerably lower.
Should I use nominal or loadable container volume when planning an order?
Always plan on loadable volume, which is about 85 to 90 percent of nominal. A 40HQ is published at roughly 76 cubic metres but realistically takes 65 to 68 once carton geometry, the door end and any pallets are accounted for. Using the nominal figure will consistently leave you short of the container count you quoted internally.
Does palletising cost me much container capacity?
Roughly 10 to 15 percent of usable volume. The pallet deck itself removes about five percent of internal height, and the rest is lost to footprint mismatch between standard pallet sizes and furniture carton dimensions. Whether that trade is worth it depends on your destination warehouse, so decide before the carton is designed rather than after.
Can you combine different products in one container?
Yes, and for most programmes it is the sensible way to reach a full load. Chairs, tables, storage items and accessories load well together because the smaller dense items fill the door end and the gaps above the last row. Because we manufacture across these categories, one loading plan and one shipment covers the whole order.