Logistics
How terrazzo is packed, and what the packing decides
Terrazzo is heavy, brittle at the edges and worthless if it arrives cracked. The packing is not a detail of shipping; it is the thing that decides whether the delivery was successful.
Terrazzo leaves the factory as a heavy, edge-brittle product, and the packing is what decides whether the delivery was a success. This is one of the few parts of the trade where the buyer can check the answer without a measurement.
Weight decides the frame
The published assemblies run from 25 to 30 lbs per square foot for a sand-cushion cement build down to 3 to 4 for an epoxy one. ⛔ That is the whole assembly and not a panel or a tile, so it is a shipping-planning figure rather than a product one — but it is enough to establish that terrazzo leaves as a dense load, and that a frame sized for a light product is over-loaded long before the volume is full.
On edge or flat is a decision, not a default
Stone travels on edge and terrazzo tile travels flat, and the reason is the same in both cases: a piece’s face is what gets abraded and chipped in handling, and an aggregate held in a cement matrix has a tensile strength that belongs to the binder. Laying a heavy panel flat puts its weight on the face a buyer looks at.
What to ask before the order is placed
Ask how many pieces fit in the frame being quoted against, and what that frame’s maximum weight is. Ask whether the pieces travel on edge. Ask what happens to a frame that arrives broken — whether the carrier’s surveyor attends, and whether photographs are taken before the frame is broken down. That last one is the only record of the claim, and it is worth more than any packaging upgrade.
What this page does not tell you
No freight rate, no container count and no delivery time, because all three move with the batch, the port and the lane. ⛔ No packaging specification is published until the range for each form is confirmed, and ⛔ no claim is made about damage rates on any shipment, because we hold no record of them.
What we do not say here: every figure above is a published system weight with the source named, and none of them describes a batch we have made. Where we hold nothing, this page says so rather than estimating.
Filed under Logistics