Sunflower Oil Container Loading: Flexi Tank vs Drum vs IBC Comparison
Most buyers pick a packing format on price per tonne, then meet the real constraint on arrival day: nobody at the receiving site can get the oil out of it. Format decides your landed cost, but it also decides the equipment, labour and yard space you need at the other end, and whether the empties become your problem. Here is how the five formats we load — flexitank, ISO tank, 190 kg drum, IBC and PET — compare for bulk edible oil.
First, the ceiling everything sits under
A standard 20ft dry container is built to an ISO maximum gross weight of 30,480 kg. Take off a tare of roughly 2.2–2.4 tonnes and the theoretical payload is around 28 tonnes. You will almost never see that loaded, because road and axle weight limits at destination usually bite first, and because every format spends some of the cube on packaging. That is why a flexitank ships well under 28 tonnes and a drum load is barely half the box’s rating.
All the figures below are typical published industry ranges, not a quoted guarantee. The number for your consignment depends on the tank or tote actually used and the destination’s weight rules, and it is confirmed on the packing list.
The five formats at a glance
| Format | Typical net oil per 20ft | Comes back? | Site needs to discharge | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flexitank | ~16–24 MT, depending on the tank | No — single trip, recycled locally | Hose to a receiving tank, level standing, often a tilt frame; bladder disposal | Lowest cost per tonne on full-container bulk |
| ISO tank | ~20–24 MT | Yes — empty must be returned to depot | Pump or gravity line to the bottom outlet, heavy-lift handling, cleaning certificate | Repeat bulk on balanced lanes; oils needing heating |
| 190 kg drum | ~15 MT (commonly 80 drums, palletised) | Rarely — reconditioned locally at best | Forklift only; drum pump or tipping cradle to decant | Mid-volume, split lots, sites with no tank |
| IBC (1,000 L) | ~9–18 MT, depending on tier and tote | Reusable, but only regionally | Forklift or pallet truck; bottom tap | Plants drawing the oil down over weeks |
| PET (1–5 L) | ~13–18 MT, cube-limited not weight-limited | No — kerbside recycling | Nothing but case handling | Retail and distribution, no decanting at all |
Flexitank
A single-use polyethylene bladder fitted inside a lined 20ft box, filled through one valve and discharged through it. Capacities in the market commonly run from about 16,000 to 24,000 litres, so roughly 16–24 tonnes of oil, and the smaller sizes exist specifically for countries with tight road limits.
It is the cheapest way to move a full container of oil: you pay for a bladder rather than steel, and you decant once instead of eighty times. What your site needs is modest but non-negotiable — a receiving tank or pit, a hose coupling, firm level ground, and ideally a tilting chassis or ramp to drain the heel. You also need somewhere for the empty bladder to go; it is recycled locally, at your cost, and in some jurisdictions that is harder than it sounds.
The trade-off is concentration. A flexitank is one undivided parcel: a seam or valve failure takes the whole load, you cannot sample it compartment by compartment, and it cannot be heated in transit. For a buyer with a tank farm and a steady draw, none of that matters. The loading sequence, liner inspection and nitrogen question are covered in the flexitank bulk shipping write-up.
ISO tank
A 20ft tank container: a stainless vessel in an ISO frame, so it handles like a box but behaves like a tank. Food-grade units on the market are commonly in the 21,000–26,000 litre bracket, which puts a realistic net load around 20–24 tonnes.
Two things make ISO tanks worth the premium. They can be heated, by steam or electric coils, which matters if your port is cold enough that oil clouds or sets in the line — and matters more for crude and harder oils. And every movement carries a cleaning certificate, so the chain of custody is documented in a way a one-trip bladder is not.
The cost sits in the return leg. The tank is an asset that has to go back to a depot and be cleaned, and that empty repositioning is priced into the freight whether you see it as a line or not. On an unbalanced lane, ISO tanks lose to flexitanks on arithmetic alone. Standards, costs and booking for ISO tanks covers the depot side.
190 kg drums
Steel or HDPE drums, four to a pallet, double-tiered. The common pattern is 80 drums in a 20ft container — around 15 tonnes — which is roughly half what a flexitank carries in the same box. Loose-loading without pallets fits more, at the price of handling time and a higher damage rate.
So why choose them? A drum needs nothing at destination but a forklift — no tank, no pump, no hose, no civil works. Each drum is a discrete lot, so one damaged unit is a 190 kg loss rather than a 20-tonne one, and the consignment can be split between warehouses or customers without decanting. And a plant using oil in batches can open one drum at a time instead of committing a whole tank.
Against that: the worst cost per tonne of the bulk options, real labour to decant, and a pile of empties to recondition or dispose of. Drums are chosen for flexibility, not economy.
IBCs
The 1,000-litre tote — usually a HDPE bottle in a steel cage, sometimes stainless — sits between drums and bulk. Net oil per tote is a little under a tonne; how many fit a 20ft depends entirely on the footprint and whether the design and the carrier permit double stacking, which is why the honest range is roughly ten totes on a single tier up to about twenty when stacked, or somewhere between nine and eighteen tonnes.
The appeal is the bottom tap: a plant can draw a tote down over weeks with no pump and no transfer tank, which suits a bakery, a sauce line or a repacker better than drums or bulk. Totes are reusable and composite bottles can be re-bottled, but returning them across an ocean rarely pays, so they are one-trip intercontinentally and genuinely circular only regionally.
PET
One, two and five-litre bottles, shrink-wrapped or cartoned on pallets. This load is limited by cube rather than weight, and roughly 13–18 tonnes of oil per 20ft is the usual outcome depending on bottle and carton size.
PET sits in a different category, because it is the only format that arrives sellable: no decanting, no transfer loss, no empties, no packaging operation at your end. The cost per tonne is the highest by a wide margin, and labelling has to satisfy the destination market before the container ships, not after. If you supply retail or informal trade rather than a factory, that premium is usually the cheapest part of the chain.
Working it through
Take it in this order. Can the receiving site accept a bulk liquid at all — tank, pump, hose, hardstanding? If not, the choice is drums, IBCs or PET and the bulk economics are irrelevant. If it can, is there a return leg for a tank, or a cold port that argues for heating? That is the flexitank-versus-ISO-tank decision. And is the oil going to a process or to a shelf? That answers PET on its own.
Then check two things people forget. Smaller packs expose more oil surface to headspace per litre, so format and storage conditions together affect how long the product holds its declared parameters. And whoever books the freight also chooses the equipment, which makes the packing decision and the trade term one conversation rather than two — see FOB vs CIF compared under Incoterms 2020.
What we need from you
We manufacture refined and crude sunflower oil in Kyiv, Ukraine, and have exported since 2000, loading all five formats above. Production runs under HACCP and ISO 22000, with non-GMO documentation on request, and every consignment ships with a certificate of analysis and a certificate of origin. Specification parameters are yours to set and are confirmed on that certificate; if you want an independent surveyor at loading — SGS, Intertek, Bureau Veritas or your own — appoint them and we will accommodate the inspection.
To quote a format we need the destination port, the quantity, and a line about how the site will discharge it. Terms are Incoterms 2020 FOB or CIF to a named port, payment by bank transfer in EUR or USD. Tell us what your plant can handle and we will say which format costs you least overall — start from the bulk refined sunflower oil page, then send us the details or email export@refinesunfloweroil.com.