Birch Plywood by the Pack, Truck and Container

October 3, 2026

A full truck of birch plywood runs out of weight before it runs out of space. At around 680 kg/m3 you reach the 24 t payload at about 15 packs and 35 m3, and the trailer deck is not full at that point. The axles are. So a full truck is a weight rather than a sheet count, and the sheet count moves with thickness: 750 sheets at 15 mm, 525 at 21 mm. If a colleague tells you a truck holds a certain number of sheets, ask which thickness he meant.

A 40 ft container carries about 15% more than a 20 ft, not twice as much. The 20 ft is volume limited for birch plywood and takes 14 packs, running out of cubic metres while it still has payload. The 40 ft is weight limited and takes 16. Sixteen against fourteen. Budget export freight on the assumption that doubling the box doubles the load and you will be wrong in the expensive direction, because the 40 ft rate sits nowhere near 15% above the 20 ft rate. Price both boxes.

Everything below is the arithmetic under those two facts, for Stiga RM birch plywood at 1250 x 2500 mm. Density drives all of it. Birch is heavy for a panel product, which is why it holds a screw and why it runs out of payload early. The grades and the rest of the specification sit in the buyer's guide.

Packs, not pallets

The shipping unit is a pack: sheets strapped and wrapped on timber bearers, sized by the mill for forklift and crane handling. Not a pallet with sheets stacked on it. Ask a mill how many sheets are on a pallet and you will get a question back.

Thickness	Sheets per pack	m2 per pack	m3 per pack	kg per pack
15 mm	50	156.2	2.34	1594
18 mm	40	125.0	2.25	1530
21 mm	35	109.4	2.30	1562

The sheet count falls as thickness rises and the volume holds. Every pack is about 2.3 m3 and about 1.5 tonnes, because the mill packs to a near constant volume rather than a constant sheet count: volume and weight are what the truck and the forklift care about. A 21 mm pack is not a thinner deal than a 15 mm pack. It is the same cube of wood cut into fewer, thicker slices. Order in packs and you are ordering in cubic metres whether you think of it that way or not.

Sheet weights go with it, for whoever plans the unload: 31.9 kg at 15 mm, 38.2 kg at 18 mm, 44.6 kg at 21 mm.

The minimum is half a truck

Half a truck load, about 8 packs, roughly 18 m3 or 12.5 tonnes. The mill produces to order and holds no stock, so nobody is pulling two packs off a warehouse rack for you.

The load table

Load	15 mm	18 mm	21 mm
Half truck, 8 packs	400 sheets, 1250 m2, 18.8 m3, 12.8 t	320 sheets, 1000 m2, 18.0 m3, 12.2 t	280 sheets, 875 m2, 18.4 m3, 12.5 t
Full truck, 15 packs	750 sheets, 2344 m2, 35.2 m3, 23.9 t	600 sheets, 1875 m2, 33.8 m3, 22.9 t	525 sheets, 1641 m2, 34.5 m3, 23.4 t
20 ft container, 14 packs	700 sheets, 2188 m2	560 sheets, 1750 m2	490 sheets, 1531 m2
40 ft container, 16 packs	800 sheets, 2500 m2	640 sheets, 2000 m2	560 sheets, 1750 m2

The assumptions. EU road payload 24 t. A 20 ft container at 33 m3 and 28 t. A 40 ft at 67 m3 and 26 t. Real limits vary by carrier, route and axle configuration, and a 40 ft container's permitted payload depends on the box, the line and the destination port's road rules. These are planning figures, not guarantees, and we confirm the final numbers at quotation.

Look along the half truck row: 400 sheets at 15 mm and 280 at 21 mm for almost exactly the same volume and weight. Buyers used to softwood or poplar get caught by that, because lighter panels fill the deck before the payload, and a birch load planned on that habit gets turned away at the weighbridge.

Square metres to sheets to packs

Most requirements start as a square metre figure off a drawing. The chain from there is short.

One sheet is 3.125 m2. So 1000 m2 of 18 mm is 320 sheets.
Divide by the pack size for that thickness, 50 or 40 or 35. So 320 sheets of 18 mm is 8 packs.
Round up. The mill ships whole packs, so 330 sheets at 18 mm is 9 packs, not 8 and a bit.

Step three moves budgets. Add your cutting waste allowance before you round rather than after, because the gap between 8 packs and 9 on a 320 sheet requirement is pure waste and a cutting plan is cheaper to adjust than an order.

The price guide converts between per sheet, per square metre and per cubic metre. The price for your market sits on each product page.

What we will load that an importer will not

Mixed grades and thicknesses on one truck. Four packs of 18 mm BB/BB and four of 15 mm CP/CP is a half truck order. Packs are near enough identical in volume and weight whatever the thickness, so a mix barely changes the loading plan, and we confirm it at quotation. That is the route for anyone below half a truck on any single item and above it in total. The thickness guide and the grades guide cover which belongs where.

Direct factory loading. The truck loads at the mill in Kuldiga. No importer's warehouse in the middle, no cross docking, no second handling charge, and you get a production slot rather than a place in a merchant's queue.

Container loads worldwide. Full truck loads quoted across Europe, containers to any port. Allow up to 3 weeks production depending on season, plus transit and the sailing. Quotes are EXW Latvia unless we say otherwise, so freight sits on the quotation separately and we quote it on request rather than guessing lane rates on a blog.

Unloading

Plan on a forklift. A pack is about 1.5 tonnes, which is not a pump truck job, and 2500 mm of pack on short forks will deflect. A 21 mm sheet at 44.6 kg is a two person lift, and so is 15 mm at 31.9 kg once it travels any distance. If a full length trailer cannot reach your unloading point, tell us at quotation and we will split the load.

Tell us the load

Send us your square metres and your destination. You get back the pack count, the weight, the price and the certificates, with mixed grades and thicknesses on the same truck if the job needs it, and freight quoted to your site or your port. Volumes above half a truck price lower.

Get in touch or see the birch plywood range. If half a truck is more than the project needs, a local merchant is the better answer and we will say so.

The six grades: BB/BB and BB/CP for visible faces, CP/CP for covered and structural work, C/C for crates and protection, F/F for formwork and F/W for floors and ramps.