Pallet & packaging standards for international road freight: EUR/EPAL, wrapping and labelling

Palletised freight is priced on the floor space it blocks, not just its weight, and it is protected — legally — by how well it is built. Those two facts make packing a commercial decision. A clean, square, stackable pallet bills as little space and carries full claim rights. A bulging, overhanging, non-stackable one bills as more space, risks being re-palletised at a cost, and can void your protection if it is damaged in transit.

SAVA's role is to load and schedule your freight across our owned and partner carriers, on a fixed Monday, Wednesday and Friday cadence. What goes onto the pallet, how it is wrapped, and how it is labelled are the sender's responsibility — and they are the parts of the shipment you control completely. This guide sets the standard we expect, so your unit loads pass inspection, price fairly in our calculators, and arrive intact.

Solid-wood packaging — pallets, crates, dunnage — needs ISPM-15 treatment only when it leaves the EU. ISPM-15 is the international standard for heat-treating (or otherwise treating) wood to kill pests; compliant wood carries the IPPC wheat-ear mark with a country code, a treatment code such as HT for heat treatment, and a registration number. For destinations like the United Kingdom or Switzerland, your pallets and any wooden crates must carry that mark, or they can be rejected at the border.

For intra-EU movements — Spain to Romania, Spain to Italy, between any EU member states — ISPM-15 does not apply. Goods move in free circulation, there is no plant-health border check of this kind, and a standard untreated EU pallet is fine. Do not pay for heat-treated wood you do not need on an intra-EU lane; do make sure it is in place before you book anything bound outside the EU. Engineered materials such as plywood, OSB and pressed-block presswood are exempt from ISPM-15 because the manufacturing process already neutralises pests.

A good unit load behaves as one solid block from the deck up. Start by keeping everything within the pallet footprint — no overhang. Cartons that hang over the edge lose most of their compression strength, snag on neighbouring pallets, and are the single most common reason a load is flagged or re-palletised. If the goods do not fit the footprint, you have the wrong pallet, not a wrapping problem.

Stack heaviest at the bottom and lightest on top, so the centre of gravity stays low. Interlock the layers like brickwork where the boxes allow it, which ties the stack together horizontally; or column-stack — boxes directly above one another — when the cartons are strong enough at the corners, which preserves vertical strength for stacking another pallet on top. Match the pattern to the goods: interlocking buys stability, column-stacking buys top-load strength.

Protect the edges and lock the load to the pallet. Edge and corner boards spread strap tension, stop the wrap cutting into cartons, and add rigidity to the column. Strap the load down to the pallet itself, not just around the boxes. Then stretch-wrap firmly, taking the film right down over the top deck boards and anchoring the bottom wraps to the pallet — a load wrapped only around the goods will slide off the pallet under braking. The test is simple: a finished unit should not shift, lean or shed cartons when you push it firmly at the top.

Mark clearly whether each pallet may be top-loaded, because on partial-load freight stackability is the biggest lever you hold over cost. A stackable pallet shares its column with another, so a pair occupies one footprint and each is billed for roughly half the loading metres. A non-stackable pallet owns the full height from deck to roof, so it carries its whole footprint as billable space regardless of how tall it actually is — which can double its loading metres, and its price.

A pallet is stackable only if it is built to take weight on top: square, within footprint, flat and strong-topped, column-stacked at the corners and strapped down. Domed tops, fragile or pyramid-loaded goods, overhang, or anything explicitly marked do-not-stack make it non-stackable. Because it is a property of how you build the pallet, not just what is inside it, it is genuinely yours to control. For the full mechanics — and a worked ten-pallet example — see our companion guides on stackable versus non-stackable pallets and on loading metres. You can also test both scenarios in our CBM and loading-meter calculator before you book, then carry the result straight into a written quote.

Spread weight evenly across the pallet so no single point is overloaded and the unit sits flat. A lopsided pallet leans, strains its straps, and is awkward and dangerous to handle with a forklift or pallet truck. Even distribution also keeps the unit within the strength of the pallet underneath it.

As a rough planning yardstick, a fully laden loading metre on a standard trailer runs to something on the order of 1,750 to 1,850 kg before weight rather than floor space starts to govern the price — an indicative band, not a fixed limit. Where your pallets are dense, send the real weights so we can check whether the lane prices on metres or on mass.

Flag a heavy pallet on the booking and on the unit itself. Carriers and their handling equipment have per-pallet weight limits, and a tail-lift in particular has a rated capacity that a single dense pallet can exceed. An undeclared heavy pallet is a classic cause of a refused collection or an accessorial charge at the kerb. Tell us the real weights — they feed the quote and the loading plan, and a pallet that matches its paperwork loads without surprises.

Put a clear address and delivery label on at least two adjacent sides of every pallet, so it can be read whichever way the unit faces on the deck. The label should carry the full delivery address and the shipment reference. Add handling marks where they apply — fragile, this-way-up, do-not-stack — printed clearly rather than scrawled, because a handler follows what is printed on the pallet, not what was meant.

Where dangerous goods are involved, the correct ADR hazard labels and UN numbers must appear on the packages and the unit, and the sender remains responsible for classifying the goods and supplying the safety data sheet. SAVA carries certified packaged ADR classes 2, 3, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, 8 and 9 — not Class 1 explosives or Class 7 radioactive — so the packaging, marks and SDS need to be in order before we load. Note that still wine under 24% ABV is not dangerous goods and needs no ADR marks; high-strength spirits may fall under ADR Class 3, which sits inside our scope.

Make every reference match. The reference on the pallet label, on your packing list and on the CMR consignment note should be one and the same. When they line up, a pallet is unambiguously tied to its paperwork at collection, in transit and at delivery — which is exactly what you need if a discrepancy or a claim ever has to be resolved.

Under the CMR Convention, insufficient or defective packing by the sender relieves the carrier of liability for damage that results from it. That is not a technicality — it is the practical reason good packing pays for itself. SAVA travels as the carrier under the CMR and carries the statutory CMR liability, set at 8.33 SDR per kilogram of the gross weight affected (an indicative figure; SDR is a currency basket that moves against the euro). But if the goods arrive damaged because the unit was poorly built, that liability can fall away entirely, and a well-packed pallet is what keeps your claim alive.

The CMR limit is also a floor, not full value. It compensates by weight, not by what the goods are worth, so for high-value freight there can be a real gap between the statutory cover and your actual loss. Where that gap matters, all-risks cargo insurance closes it — SAVA can arrange it, or you can source your own. Our guide on cargo insurance versus CMR liability works the gap through with numbers; the short version is that packing protects the claim and insurance protects the value.

There is an operational cost to poor units too, separate from any claim. A pallet that overhangs, leans or cannot be stacked safely gets re-palletised, downgraded to non-stackable, or refused outright — each of which is an accessorial charge and a delay, and re-handling is itself a common source of damage. Our guide to accessorial charges sets out what those interventions cost. Building it right the first time is almost always cheaper than fixing it on the dock.

Run this quick check before you book. Right pallet for the job: EUR/EPAL (1200×800), EUR6 half-pallet (800×600) or industrial (1200×1000), sound and dry; stamped exchange-grade EPAL only if pallet exchange applies; ISPM-15 heat-treated wood only for non-EU destinations such as the UK or Switzerland. Unit load square and stable: nothing overhanging the footprint, heaviest at the bottom, interlocked or column-stacked, edge and corner boards fitted, strapped to the pallet and stretch-wrapped down to the deck with the bottom anchored.

Then confirm the commercial details. Stackability marked correctly on every pallet — and tested in our loading-meter calculator so the price reflects it. Weight spread evenly, heavy pallets flagged, per-pallet limits respected. Address and delivery label on two sides, handling and ADR marks where they apply, and the reference matching your packing list and the CMR. With that done, send the dimensions, weights and stackability through and we will turn around a written quote, typically in about 15 to 20 minutes and valid for 24 hours.