Logistics by product

Soft Drinks & Non-Alcoholic Logistics

Non-alcoholic lines are the simplest lane on paper and the most weight-constrained in practice.

Articulated curtain-side lorry travelling on an open road

The paperwork advantage is real: with no excise duty applying in most markets, there is no bonded movement, no duty-suspension arrangement and no alcohol licensing to satisfy, so the documentation set reduces to ordinary commercial and customs paperwork. That removes the complication that dominates spirits shipping and leaves the question as one of pure freight efficiency.

Freight efficiency here is a weight problem. Water and juice are dense and the packaging adds to it, so a container of 1.5-litre PET or of glass reaches its payload limit well before the floor is covered — buying more cube achieves nothing once the tonnes are spent. Cans shift the balance back towards volume. The practical consequence is that a soft-drinks load is planned against weight and a mixed load is balanced by pairing dense lines with light ones rather than by filling space.

Still lines — juice, water, concentrate — can move in bulk by flexitank at up to roughly 27,000 litres per container, on the same logic as bulk wine: stop shipping the packaging. Carbonated product cannot, because a flexitank is unpressurised and carbonation needs packaging built to hold it. Temperature tolerance is wider than for wine or beer, but not unlimited in either direction: sustained heat deforms PET and weakens cartons, and freezing on a northern winter routing will split cans and burst bottles.

Planning reference

Logistics reference figures for Soft Drinks
Excise duty	Not normally applicable — lighter documentation
Binding container constraint	Payload weight for most bottled lines
Bulk option	Flexitank, still lines only (juice, water)
Flexitank capacity	Up to approx. 27,000 litres per container
Temperature risk	Sustained heat and freezing both damage PET and cans

Planning figures, not commitments; the quotation is what binds. Industry reference data published by Hillebrand Gori.

Shipping questions

Do soft drinks need temperature-controlled transport?

Rarely. The tolerance is much wider than for wine or beer, and a dry container suits most routings. The two real exceptions sit at opposite ends: sustained heat deforms PET and weakens secondary packaging, and freezing on a northern winter routing splits cans and bursts bottles. Where a routing runs to either extreme, an insulated liner is normally sufficient without going to a reefer.

Can juice or water ship in bulk?

Still product can, by flexitank, at up to roughly 27,000 litres in a standard container — the same economics as bulk wine, in that you stop paying freight on packaging. Carbonated lines cannot: a flexitank holds no pressure, so anything carbonated has to stay in cans, bottles or another pressure-rated format.

Why does a soft-drinks container reach its limit so early?

Because the product is dense. Water and juice weigh close to a tonne per cubic metre before packaging, so a container of large-format PET or glass reaches its payload allowance with floor space still unused. Ordering more to fill the space simply exceeds the weight limit. The mixed container builder plans against whichever limit binds first rather than assuming a fixed case count.

Product availability is subject to stock, destination, packaging specification, applicable trademark rights and territorial distribution restrictions.