Disposable drinkware is light and bulky, and that one fact decides almost everything about how it travels. An order fills the space in a box, a trailer or a container long before it comes anywhere near a weight limit, so the useful question at quotation stage is never how many kilos you are buying but how much volume. What follows is the export and logistics side of the order: how that volume is worked out, and what must be agreed before goods leave Turkey.
From box to trailer
Each article has a fixed piece count to the export box, and the count drops steeply as the format widens. Nesting depth rather than weight is the reason: a tall shell sinks deep into the one below it, while a shallow ice cream cup barely settles inside its neighbour. The same box therefore holds three thousand of the smallest hot article and one thousand of the 200 ml ice cream cup, and any calculation that starts from pieces instead of boxes will mislead you.
Boxes are stacked onto pallets and the loading columns beside an article answer the question for whole loads. A 12 oz hot cup fills a 20' HQ with 330 boxes, a 40' HQ with 800 and a road trailer with 792; the same three columns read 350, 900 and 792 on the 4 oz, and 310, 750 and 792 on the 14 oz. Notice that the trailer figure beats the 40' HQ figure on several articles, because a curtainsider offers more usable space than a high-cube box does. That is one reason European buyers so often take goods by road while an overseas buyer books a container.
The pallet, and why it simplifies the arithmetic
The minimum order is 3 pallets (60 cartons); on PET the minimum is one full truck. On board items, depending on what the plant is running that week, less can be discussed — if you are thinking of a part load, ask anyway and we will look at it together. We do not ship goods by courier. Lots of ten or twenty cartons get damaged in a parcel network and do not pay for themselves; the goods are loaded onto your vehicle at the factory. The only thing we send by courier is a sample. Lead time depends on the size of the order, whether it is printed, and how loaded the plant is at the time; the exact number is given in writing with the quotation.
The delivery term and the type of load
The delivery term follows the type of load, and the term that applies changes what the figure in front of you covers. Under EXW the goods are made ready for collection and your forwarder carries it from there. FOB puts them through export clearance and onto the vessel at the loading port. CIF carries sea freight and marine insurance through to the port you name. DAP brings the consignment to an address in your own country, with import duty and customs clearance still on your side.
In practice the usual arrangement is FCA: you send the vehicle and we load it at our plant in Başakşehir. That is precisely what separates FCA from EXW — under EXW loading is the buyer's responsibility, whereas here we carry it out ourselves. Just tell us in your enquiry whether the shipment is a part load or a full truck.
Which term applies depends on the type of load. On part loads the term is EXW: the goods are made ready at our plant and your forwarder handles consolidation and transport. On a full truck we can also work DAP — we arrange the transport and bring the goods to the address you name. Between the two sits the usual arrangement, FCA: you send the vehicle, we load it at the factory.
There is no universally right choice. A buyer holding a freight agreement of their own usually wants EXW or FOB, so the sea leg stays inside a contract they already control, while a buyer who needs one comparable number against a domestic source asks for CIF or DAP. The term also fixes the point at which risk changes hands, which matters when a box sits at a congested port. Whichever term applies is written into the offer and repeated on the proforma, so nobody is assuming anything later.
Customs headings and the papers in the file
On the export and logistics file, board goods travel under heading 4823.69 and clear cold cups under 3924.10, while transparent closures fall to 3923.50. Three headings can therefore appear on one consignment. Give them to your broker early, since duty rates and any import formality are read off the heading, and remember that the office clearing the goods has the final say on how they are entered. Every offer states the heading against each line so the classification is not looked up twice.
The export and logistics paperwork itself is short. A proforma sets out the specification, quantities, packing and the agreed term, and it is the document your accounts department pays against. On dispatch you receive a commercial invoice and a packing list carrying box counts, gross and net weights and cubic volume, plus the transport document for the mode used: a bill of lading by sea, a CMR note by road. Where your customs authority wants an origin or movement paper, it is drawn up with the shipment. Say at order stage which documents your side needs, because several of them cannot be issued once goods have sailed.
Part loads and full containers
Not every purchase fills a box of its own, and a part load is a perfectly normal way to run a first printed design. It is worth knowing what it costs, though. Groupage freight on light cargo is charged on volume, so half a pallet of cups can be billed as though it weighed several times what it does, and buyers frequently discover that adding a second size moves the order into a full container at a lower cost per piece than the small shipment would have carried. Send the sizes and quantities you have in mind together with the destination country and the term you want to work on, and the export and logistics plan comes back with them. The reply comes back with the stow, the packing figures, the headings and the production schedule, and where the mix would leave space unused we say so rather than load air across an ocean.
Asking for a sample first
Nobody commits to 60 cartons on a photograph. You can ask for a sample before ordering: tell us which articles you are considering and whether you need them plain or with your own print. Plain items come from catalogue stock; a printed sample needs a printing plate, so it belongs to the order rather than to the enquiry stage. Availability and sending terms are written into the same quotation, not negotiated separately afterwards.
Export and logistics in practice: most buyers send their own truck
In practice the usual route out of the plant is not a container but a truck, and most buyers arrange it themselves on ex-works terms: they load at Başakşehir, Istanbul, with their own carrier. There is a plain reason for that — a buyer who books freight regularly on his own lane almost always beats the price we would quote him, and we would rather say so than add a margin he can see through.
If you prefer FOB or CIF we will organise it, and the quotation shows both figures so you can compare. For European buyers the road route is the real advantage: Germany, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary are days away by truck, not weeks away by sea, and a part load can leave without waiting for a full container.
Loading happens at our factory and is photographed. Your vehicle arrives at the Başakşehir plant, the loading and sealing are recorded, and the images reach you before the truck leaves. We do not send production orders through parcel networks: a paper cup is easily crushed there, and we prefer to keep handling under our own roof.