Export and logistics
A trolley bag of screen-printed shirts is not a shipment. Export packing is a packaging design problem with a moisture component, a heat component and a paperwork component, and all three get decided at the carton, before anyone thinks about freight.
Branding added by screen printing makes garments heavier and stiffer than retail equivalents, so the fabric will not fall into the void inside a box and cushion itself. Every printed shirt is a rigid panel of ink sitting on top of knit, and the failure mode is a crease across the chest or a split shoulder seam where the garment was folded hard and stayed folded for three weeks in a warm container.
The rule we work to is one item per layer, folded to the manufacturer's specification rather than in half, with tissue or thin interleaf paper between printed faces. Polybags are fine for hygiene and they are not fine for abrasion: printed surfaces rubbing directly against each other in a dry container will scuff. Add the interleaf and the abrasion drops noticeably, and you have protected the part of the goods the customer actually looks at.
Carton sizing matters more than carton strength. A carton with two centimetres of air around the contents is stronger in practice than a heavier-gauge box packed tight, because the load is carried by the walls and the corners rather than by crushing pressure on the goods. Over-fill and the bottom seam carries the whole load; under-fill and the contents move and abrade in transit. Fill the void with void fill, and do not use paper as void fill in a damp climate, because wet crumpled paper in a sealed box produces a very effective mold culture.
Do not exceed the safe working load printed on the box. A double-wall carton is rated for somewhere between 20 and 30 kilograms depending on size and manufacturer, and a carton of cotton polos gets to that number faster than people expect. Ship apparel flat and boxed in original cartons where possible, and resist the temptation to use a smaller retail box to save freight volume. Freight is usually cheaper than the replacement order.
A container leaving a Black Sea port in winter can carry a wide diurnal temperature swing, and the dew point inside the box can cross the fabric surface repeatedly. That produces musty smell and permanent dye marks that appear weeks after arrival. Desiccant bags sized to the carton volume, one per 60 to 80 litres, plus a moisture barrier liner, is the normal answer.
Plastisol ink stays workable at higher temperature than water-based, and heat in a closed container can reach 55 to 60 degrees Celsius on an exposed yard in summer. That is enough to soften a plastisol print, weld a folded face to its neighbour, or bend a rigid PVC keyring or a USB housing. Ship plastics separately from textiles in hot months, and never leave a packed carton on a truck body for two days.
Solid wood packaging entering most markets must carry an IPPC mark and be heat-treated to core temperature 56 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes. Plywood and OSB are exempt because the veneer process glues the layers together. Specify plywood or a manufacturer-marked solid-wood pallet, and check the mark on the actual pallet rather than trusting the forwarder's summary.
Two claims dominate cargo insurance disputes: crushing from weight stacked above, and impact from a dropped pallet or a fork-lift entry during port handling. Corners and edges take the impact load, so corner boards and edge protectors on the cartons that will be on the bottom of a stack are cheaper than the units they protect.
Drop testing is unglamorous and it saves real money. Take a packed carton at the specification you intend to use, mark the drop orientation on it, and drop it on each face and each edge from a height agreed with your freight forwarder. For a consolidated apparel carton of realistic weight, testing from around 60 to 80 centimetres reproduces a realistic pallet-handling event rather than a laboratory stunt. Inspect for print transfer to the interleaf, seam failure at the shoulder and collar, and any contact mark on a printed chest.
Run the test on the worst carton in the run, not the best. Ask the production team for the carton with the highest garment density and the tightest fold, because that is the one that will fail. If a carton passes and the carton next to it does not, the packing method is inconsistent and your damage rate will average somewhere between the two, which is the worst outcome for a client counting pieces on arrival.
For goods in rigid plastic, supplement the carton test with a simple compression check. Stack the packed cartons to the height you expect in the container or on the pallet and leave them under load for a week. Mugs and bottles under a stack that exceeds their box rating will deform, and a deformed mug is a broken mug even though it never fell.
Across shipments we have handled, the most common problems are not dramatic. Garments arrive with a printing fault because the file was wrong before the box was ever closed. Second is creasing from under-packing. Third is moisture marking in a carton that was packed damp in a warm workshop. Fourth is a count shortfall, usually because the final count was done at the factory and nobody re-counted at the loading gate.
True freight damage is rarer than that list suggests, and mostly it is crushing at the bottom of the stack or a fork-lift entry through a bagged carton. Write the loading instruction on the carton, use corner protection on the bottom two layers, and photograph the stack before the trailer doors close. That photograph settles most disputes before they start, which is the whole purpose of taking it.
Label everything twice: once on the outer carton and once on the unit inside. Label with carton number and running total, so that a receiving team can identify a missing carton without opening all of them, and include the packing list reference on both labels. Include a copy of the packing list in a pouch on the outside of the first carton and in a waterproof bag inside it, so a single document survives even if one copy is lost in transit.
Decide road or sea, the number of transhipments, the destination climate and the storage the goods will see on arrival. Road through a hot summer in Central Asia and sea freight through a winter Black Sea port are different packaging problems, and the answer changes carton grade, desiccant count and whether plastics ship with textiles.
Pack one carton to specification, run the drop test on all faces and edges, compress a small stack under load for a week, and check the printed surface after. Adjust fold, interleaf quantity and void fill until the reference carton passes.
Confirm HS codes with a licensed broker rather than guessing, check that the IPPC mark and heat treatment appear on every solid-wood pallet, and agree the packing list format the consignee's broker expects. A rejected certificate of origin costs more than the cartons ever saved.
Pack to the tested reference, count at the loading gate rather than at the factory bench, mark every carton number, photograph the stack and the sealed trailer, and send the full carton list with the shipping documents. Keep one unopened carton aside for 30 days as a reference.
Branded merchandise is not a sample and not a gift. It is goods, it has a value, and it moves under an ordinary commercial invoice. Two mistakes account for most of the holds we see: a commercial invoice that omits the actual agreed value, and a description that says samples or promotional items when the contents are 900 kilograms of apparel.
Match the invoice value to the real transaction. If the client has negotiated a volume rate, invoice at that rate and state the quantity and unit price separately so the arithmetic is visible to the broker. State the country of origin for the goods, which for goods produced in Armenia from imported blanks is where they were last substantially transformed, and be consistent across the invoice, the packing list and the certificate of origin.
Check the importing country's rules for the product itself, not only for the packaging. Textile labelling requirements, plastic food-contact rules and labelling of electrical items vary by market, and a garment that is perfectly legal to send to one destination can be held for a missing fibre composition label in another. If a market is new to you, budget a customs broker consultation before production, not at the port.
Keep two sets of documents. One set travels with the goods, one set stays with you, and the copies should be identical. When a dispute happens months later, the copy at your end is the evidence, and reconstructing it from an email thread is slow and unreliable.
Packaging is a real line in the order and clients are often surprised by it. Ask your supplier for the packaging cost stated as a separate item: cartons and void fill per cubic metre, desiccant per carton, interleaf paper per unit, corner protection per pallet, and any palletised or cartonised freight rate. At a full container the packaging is a small share; at half a pallet of textiles it can be a tenth of the goods value, and that is worth knowing before you commit.
Also agree who arranges the freight forwarder, whether the supplier uses a known carrier with a published lane rate, and what happens if goods are damaged in transit and claimed. The claim window on cargo insurance is short and the evidence is the photograph you took before the trailer closed.
Pallet choice is where the chain-of-custody problems start. A EUR pallet entered by hand from the workshop travels badly because the boards are often the same thickness but not the same hardness, and a loaded bag that sags on one edge tips at the first fork-lift entry. Specify the pallet standard with the packer, confirm it has four-way forklift entry if the warehouse will handle it that way, and check the actual pallet on the truck rather than the one in the photo.
Stretch wrap does two jobs: it keeps the load together and it applies enough tension to stop the cartons sliding. Too little wrap and a tall stack shears sideways at the first braking event; too much and the bottom cartons deform under compression. A good default is five to seven passes with a corner board at each vertical edge, and strapping in both directions across the top tier if the stack exceeds about two metres.
Insist on a photograph at the loading gate, in two parts: the full stack inside the trailer with the doors open, and the closed doors with the seal number visible. Record the seal number on the bill of lading. A seal that does not match is the single most useful thing to establish early, because after the trailer is opened by the wrong party there is no way back.
Build a two-minute loading gate check into the routine and do not let anyone skip it. Count cartons, not garments. Count at the gate where the trolley is waiting, not on the bench three hours earlier. Photograph, seal, record, send the carton list. Four steps, thirty seconds, and it removes most of the arguments this process exists to prevent.
If your programme ships the same garments to several destinations every quarter, evaluate reusable plastic containers or foldable crates after the third shipment rather than before. The maths is simple: disposable cartons cost per unit, reusable ones cost per trip plus the labour to return them, and that labour is the part people forget. Reusable packaging only wins on dense, regular, multi-destination lanes. It loses on a one-off shipment, and it loses badly if the destination has no reliable way to return empties.
If you do move to reusable, budget for the fact that a damaged container gets quietly dropped from the cycle and your stock of empties shrinks by a few percent a month. Check the return count on every consignment, and price the replacement rate into the packaging cost from the beginning. The alternative is discovering in month seven that you cannot assemble a full pallet.
A printing fault caused by the file, before anything was ever packed. Then creasing from under-packing, moisture marking in a carton closed in a damp workshop, and count shortfalls from counting at the factory bench instead of at the loading gate. Genuine freight damage sits fourth, and mostly it is crushing at the bottom of the stack or a fork-lift entry.
No. ISPM-15 covers solid wood packaging, which in practice means pallets and crates. Corrugated board and plywood are exempt because their layers are bonded together in manufacture. Check the IPPC mark and the heat treatment code on every solid-wood pallet, on the pallet itself, not on the supplier's summary sheet.
One bag per 60 to 80 litres of carton volume is a working rule, paired with a moisture barrier liner. The risk on a winter sea shipment is condensation forming on the fabric surface as the container breathes through the diurnal temperature cycle, not rain. In summer, desiccant is nearly irrelevant and heat is the whole problem.
A closed container on an exposed yard in July can reach 55 to 60 degrees Celsius. That is enough to soften a plastisol print until it welds to the neighbouring garment, or to deform a rigid PVC keyring or USB housing. Ship plastics apart from textiles in hot months, and never leave packed cartons sitting on a truck body for a couple of days.
A commercial invoice that omits the real agreed value, and a description that calls the goods samples when the carton holds several hundred kilograms of apparel. State quantity and unit price separately so the broker can follow the arithmetic, keep country of origin consistent across invoice, packing list and certificate, and retain identical document copies at your end.
Only on dense, regular, multi-destination lanes, and only after the third shipment, because the labour to return the empties has to be counted too. A one-off export loses on packaging cost alone. If you adopt reusable crates, price the replacement rate in from the start, since damaged containers quietly leave the cycle and the empties stock shrinks every month.
No. Corp-Merch is an independent merchandise production and supplier company. We supply branded programmes to corporate buyers in the market, and we are not a partner, sponsor or authorised supplier of any venue, hotel, carrier, port authority or industry body.
Corp-Merch is an independent merchandise production and supplier company. This page describes packaging and export practice for merchandise we produce. It is not customs advice, not a freight contract, and it implies no relationship with any bank, carrier, port authority or industry body.
If you tell us the destination country, the mode of transport and the approximate quantity, we will come back with a carton specification, a packaging cost per cubic metre and the documents we think your broker will ask for. No obligation, and no packaging advice that ignores how hot the yard is in July.