Packing is not a detail settled at the end of a negotiation. It is a technical decision with a commercial consequence in four directions at once, and it should be made before the first offer is priced.
The same tonne of Bitumen 60/70 can leave a refinery as a 150 kg steel drum, a one-tonne meltable bag or a share of a 25 tonne tank container. The product inside is identical. Everything around it is not. Packing determines the number of containers on the booking, the equipment that has to be standing ready at the discharge point, the labour needed to open the cargo, the waste stream created once it is empty, and the number of separate surfaces through which water, dirt or a previous cargo can reach the binder.
Smaller units cost more per tonne twice over. The packing itself is more expensive per tonne of product — a 150 kg drum means 6.67 drums for every tonne against 5.41 drums at a 185 kg fill — and the smaller unit also carries less cargo per container slot, so the ocean freight is spread over fewer tonnes. A 20-foot container of 150 kg drums moves 12 MT for the same slot cost as a bitutainer moving 20 to 25 MT. When comparing offers, compare landed cost per tonne of product delivered, not the price per tonne of bitumen.
Contamination is almost always a packaging failure rather than a product failure. Reconditioned drums carrying traces of a previous content, water sitting in a drum rim and drawn in as the head cools, bags stored on bare ground, a tank container that was not dedicated to bitumen, a shore line still holding another product — these are the sources, and every one of them sits in the packing rather than in the binder. Waste is the other. Every packing format except bulk and returnable tanks leaves something behind, and residue-coated steel or film is not ordinary scrap in every jurisdiction.
Loading figures below are the standard values used across this site. Exact counts vary with drum dimensions, container type and any destination weight restriction, and should always be confirmed against the loading plan before a shipment schedule is committed.
| Packing | Net per unit | Per 20' FCL | Needed at destination | Waste left behind | Cost per tonne |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New steel drum | 150 kg | 80 drums — 12 MT | Drum decanter or melter, forklift with drum clamp, scrap outlet | About 1.6 t of residue-coated steel per container | Highest |
| New steel drum | 180 kg | 80 drums — 14.4 MT | As above; same handling, 20 % more product per drum | About 1.6 t of steel per container | High |
| New steel drum | 185 kg | 80 drums — 14.8 MT | As above; fewest drums to open per tonne | About 1.6 t of steel per container | High — the best of the drum options |
| Jumbo bag with release liner | 1 MT | 20 bags — 20 MT | Melter that accepts blocks, lifting rated for 1 t | Woven outer bag and liner per tonne | Medium |
| Meltable poly bag | 1 MT | 20 bags — 20 MT | Melter, 1 t lifting, engineer's acceptance of the film | Near zero — the film enters the mix | Medium |
| Carton or kraft bag (oxidized grades) | 25 kg | Palletised — count set by the pallet pattern | Manual or pallet handling, kettle or melter | Paper, liner and pallets | High; driven by unit count and handling, not by freight |
| Bitutainer or heated tank container | 20–25 MT | 1 unit — 20–25 MT | Heating to discharge, pump, receiving tank, return logistics if leased | None; the unit is reused or returned | Low |
| Bulk vessel parcel | Parcel size | Not applicable | Jetty line, heated shore tanks, independent quantity survey | None | Lowest |
Drums remain the default export packing because they need no special equipment to load, they can be split across several end users, and they survive rough handling at ports that have no bitumen infrastructure at all.
The common export drum is a new steel drum of 200 to 210 litres nominal capacity, the same envelope as a 55 US gallon drum. It is always a full-open-head drum — the 1A2 form in the standard packaging nomenclature rather than the bung-closed 1A1 — for the plain reason that a binder which is solid at ambient temperature can be neither filled nor emptied through a two-inch bung. What varies is how that open end is closed after filling, and that is what decides the work at destination: a head seamed permanently onto the body has to be cut off with a de-heading tool, while a removable head clamped by a lever-locking ring unbolts and can be put back on. The two look almost identical in a photograph. Bitumen in solid form is not classified as a dangerous good for transport, so UN performance-certified packaging is not normally required — those codes describe how a drum is built rather than an approval it carries — but the closure type still belongs in the contract, because the buyer has to know before the box arrives whether opening eighty drums means unbolting rings or cutting steel.
Steel gauge is worth naming too. A light-gauge body saves money per drum and arrives dented, and a dented drum is harder to stack, harder to clamp and more likely to have opened a seam. If drums are being trucked inland after discharge, specify the gauge rather than leaving it to the cheapest available.
Drums are filled on a drumming line with binder at roughly 140 to 160 °C, weighed to the declared net weight, and then cooled before they are sealed, palletised or stuffed. Cooling is the step buyers underestimate. A drum filled hot and stacked immediately will deform under the tier above it, and it will draw air and moisture as the headspace contracts. Cooling is done on a line by air, or by a water bath, and water cooling is where a good deal of external rust and rim water originates. Ask how drums are cooled and how long they stand before loading.
Fill volume follows from density. Using the site density reference of about 0.952 t/m³ at 150 °C, a 180 kg fill occupies roughly 189 litres and a 185 kg fill roughly 194 litres, so both sit at roughly 90 to 92 % of a 210 litre drum with sensible ullage for expansion and handling. A 150 kg fill occupies only about 158 litres, which leaves a quarter of the drum empty — so 150 kg is normally supplied either in a smaller drum body or as a deliberately part-filled drum. Part-filled drums with a large headspace dent more easily and stack less predictably.
The 80 drum figure is geometry, not weight. A standard 20-foot container has an internal floor of about 5.90 m by 2.35 m. At an outside drum diameter of roughly 0.585 m that gives ten drums along the length and four across the width — forty drums per tier. Internal height is about 2.39 m and a 210 litre drum stands roughly 0.88 m, so two tiers fit comfortably and a third does not, quite apart from what a third tier would do to the drums at the bottom. Forty by two is eighty, and that holds whether the fill is 150, 180 or 185 kg.
The consequence is that drummed cargo uses barely half the container's legal payload. Eighty drums at 180 kg net plus their tare is about 16 tonnes of cargo in a box permitted to carry roughly 28 tonnes. You are paying a full slot to move a half-loaded container, and that, more than the price of the steel, is why drums carry the highest cost per tonne.
No drum empties completely. A film of binder clings to the wall and a heel remains in the bottom, so an empty bitumen drum is a residue-bearing container rather than clean scrap. In several jurisdictions that changes how it may be stored, transported and sold, and the local waste code — not the supplier — is what governs. Against that, the drums have genuine scrap value in most import markets, and in some the resale of empties offsets a meaningful part of the packing premium. Establish which of those two applies to your site before you choose 150 kg drums for a large tonnage.
Drum decanting is where hot-bitumen burns happen, because it is the operation with the most manual contact. If hot bitumen contacts skin, cool the area with clean cold running water for at least 20 minutes. Never peel adhered bitumen off the skin and never attempt to strip it with solvent — the bitumen is sterile and is holding the burn surface; its removal is a clinical decision. Get the casualty to medical care with the bitumen still in place.
Bagged and cast formats exist to solve the two problems drums create: the steel waste and the wasted payload. They solve both, and they introduce constraints of their own around ambient temperature and binder specification.
A jumbo bag, sometimes sold as a bitubag, is a one-tonne unit in which hot binder is cast into a woven polypropylene outer bag fitted with a heat-resistant release liner. The binder is poured at around 140 to 160 °C and cooled — in a tunnel, a water bath or simply over time — until the block has set. At destination the outer bag and liner are stripped off and the block is charged into the melter. Twenty bags load into a 20-foot container for a net 20 MT, against 14.4 MT for the same container in 180 kg drums: a 39 % gain in cargo per slot with no change in the freight.
A meltable bag replaces the strip-off liner with a film formulated to dissolve into the binder at mixing temperature, so the entire package is charged into the melter and nothing is left to dispose of. Loading is the same 20 bags and 20 MT per 20-foot container. The trade-off is that a small quantity of polymer enters the binder. The dosage is low, but it is not zero, and it is a change to the material the engineer approved. If your project specification prohibits additives, or if the binder is going into a product where the polymer content is controlled, ask before you buy — and if you proceed, get the acceptance in writing rather than assuming it.
This is the constraint that catches buyers out. A bagged block has to stay a block. It has to hold its shape under its own weight, under the bag above it, in a container that can exceed 60 °C in the sun, and in an open yard in a hot climate. Ring and ball softening points across the penetration-grade paving family, measured to ASTM D36 or EN 1427, run from roughly 43 to 51 °C for a 70/100, through 49 to 56 °C for a 60/70, up to about 55 to 63 °C for a 30/40 — every one of them at or near the temperatures a closed box in the sun can reach, and the softer the grade, the worse the exposure. Bags of soft paving grades slump, weld into one another and become unliftable. That is why bagged formats are most reliable for harder and higher softening point grades, why bags must be kept out of direct sun and stacked no more than two high in most conditions, and why the ambient temperature at the destination is a legitimate question to raise before this packing is agreed. It is also why the shipment season matters: the same bag that travels safely in January may not in July.
Oxidized, or blown, grades are a different case entirely. Grades such as 85/25, 90/15, 95/25 and 115/15 are named for their softening point and penetration, and a softening point of 85 or 115 °C sits far above any ambient temperature the cargo will meet. That makes them genuinely castable into small solid units, and the standard formats are the 25 kg multi-wall kraft paper bag and the 25 kg carton, both usually with an internal release liner, palletised and shrink-wrapped for the container.
The 25 kg unit exists for a specific end user: the roofing and waterproofing plant, the pipe-coating shop and the small membrane producer, all of whom charge a kettle by hand and have no lifting equipment at all. Loading is set by the pallet pattern and the stack height rather than by a fixed unit count, so the tonnage per container has to be confirmed on the loading plan rather than assumed from a rule of thumb. Never accept cartons or kraft bags for a paving-grade binder: the format only works because the softening point is high, and a 60/70 in a carton is a puddle waiting to happen.
Waste falls sharply. A meltable bag leaves nothing; a jumbo bag leaves a woven outer and a liner per tonne against roughly 110 kg of steel per tonne in 180 kg drums; cartons leave paper and pallets. Contamination risk shifts rather than disappearing: there is no reconditioned-container problem and no rust, but bagged blocks stored directly on soil or on a dusty yard surface pick up mineral matter that goes straight into the melter with the binder. Store bagged product on pallets, on a hard surface, under cover.
Once a buyer has heated storage, packing stops being packaging and becomes transport equipment. Cost per tonne falls sharply, and the obligations move from the warehouse to the discharge operation.
A bitutainer is an insulated, heated tank built into a 20-foot ISO frame so that it moves as a standard container on any ship, chassis or reach stacker. Capacity is typically 20 to 25 MT. Heating is by diesel burner, electric elements or a hot-oil coil depending on the build, and most units carry a discharge valve and many carry a pump. Units come in two commercial forms and the difference is entirely financial: a returnable unit is leased or owned by the seller and must be repositioned empty after discharge, while a one-way unit is priced into the cargo and stays with the buyer. Ask which is being offered, because an unreturned lease and an unexpected repositioning charge land after the cargo has already been used.
A conventional ISO tank container with heating serves the same purpose and moves through the same equipment. The critical question with any tank is dedication: was this tank previously in bitumen service, and if not, what was in it and how was it cleaned? A tank cleaning certificate for the last previous cargo is a reasonable thing to request, and it is far cheaper than establishing after discharge why a binder failed solubility in trichloroethylene to ASTM D2042.
Solid bitumen in drums, bags or cartons at ambient temperature is not regulated as dangerous goods. Bitumen carried at or above 100 °C is a different matter: it falls under UN 3257, Elevated temperature liquid, n.o.s., at or above 100 °C, Class 9. That classification brings placarding, documentation and, at some terminals, restrictions on stowage and acceptance. It is one of the reasons a tank container shipment involves more paperwork than a drummed one, and it is worth confirming that the destination terminal will accept a Class 9 elevated temperature unit before booking.
Bulk is the lowest cost per tonne available and it is not close. Cargo moves in the heated coiled tanks of a bitumen tanker, loads at roughly 140 to 160 °C, and discharges through a jetty line into shore tanks. What it demands in return is infrastructure the buyer either has or does not: a berth that can receive the vessel, an insulated and heated shore line, heated storage of sufficient capacity to take the whole parcel, and the customs regime to clear a bulk liquid rather than a packed cargo.
Quantity on a bulk parcel is established by survey rather than by counting units, which is a discipline of its own. Establish in the contract that quantity is determined on a weight basis in metric tonnes, name the point of determination and the surveyor, and agree a tolerance. Volume gauged hot at load port and volume gauged cooler at discharge will not agree even when nothing at all is missing, and that discrepancy is the origin of most bulk shortfall claims.
Almost every counter-intuitive fact about bitumen packing comes back to one number: the product is roughly as dense as water, and containers are built for cargo that is not.
A standard 20-foot general purpose container has an internal capacity of about 33.2 m³, a tare of roughly 2.2 tonnes and a maximum gross weight of 30,480 kg stamped on its CSC safety approval plate. That leaves a payload of approximately 28.2 tonnes. Bitumen at working temperature has a density of about 0.95 t/m³, and about 1.03 t/m³ once cold — the same density basis used on the tonnage and volume conversion page of this site. Fill that 33.2 m³ with bitumen and you are carrying somewhere between 32 and 34 tonnes of product — several tonnes over the legal payload before the packing is even counted.
So the container runs out of weight before it runs out of space, and every bitumen packing format is really an answer to the question of how much of that 28 tonnes you can actually use:
A 40-foot general purpose container gives you 67.7 m³, roughly double the space — and no extra weight allowance at all. Its maximum gross weight under ISO 668 is the same 30,480 kg — some individual units are plated higher, so read the CSC plate on the box you are actually allocated — while its tare is around 3.7 tonnes instead of 2.2. The payload therefore falls to about 26.7 tonnes, some 1.5 tonnes less than a 20-foot box. For a cargo limited by density, the second half of a 40-foot container is unusable space you have paid to ship.
The drum arithmetic makes it concrete. Two 20-foot containers carry 160 drums, or 28.8 MT at a 180 kg fill. A 40-foot container at 200 kg gross per drum can legally take about 133 drums — roughly 23.9 MT — because the payload runs out first. You surrender nearly five tonnes of cargo, and a 40-foot slot is rarely priced below two 20-foot slots by enough to compensate. There are exceptions, mostly inland moves where a single 40-foot chassis is cheaper to run than two 20-foot ones, but on ocean legs the 20-foot container is the correct default for bitumen and the reason is arithmetic rather than habit.
The CSC plate governs what the container may weigh. It does not govern what the truck under it may weigh, and in a good many markets the road limit binds first. A 20-foot container loaded to its full 30,480 kg gross needs a tractor and chassis combination legally able to carry it, and that is not universal:
There is a second, subtler problem with heavy 20-foot containers. The cargo sits over a short wheelbase, so weight concentrates on one bogie. A 20-foot box carried on a 40-foot chassis can be legal on gross weight and still be illegal on the tandem axle simply because of where the load sits. This is why heavily loaded 20-foot containers are moved on dedicated 20-foot chassis or sliding-bogie chassis, and it is why a destination that looks straightforward on paper can force a lighter load plan.
Under SOLAS Chapter VI Regulation 2, the shipper must provide a verified gross mass for every packed container before it is loaded aboard a vessel, and a container without a VGM will not be loaded. For drummed cargo the VGM is the container tare plus the drum count multiplied by gross weight per drum — net product plus 18 to 22 kg of tare each — not the net product weight on the invoice. Getting this wrong is a rolled booking rather than a fine, and it is entirely avoidable.
The right packing is almost always determined by the buyer's own capability rather than by the price of the packing. Find the row that describes your discharge point.
| What you have at destination | Packing that fits | Packing to avoid | The reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contractor buying for one project, no melting plant, hired equipment | New steel drums, 180 or 185 kg | Bitutainer, bulk | Drums can be moved one at a time by a hired forklift and heated in a small decanter; liquid formats need plant you would have to build for a single job |
| Drum decanting line already installed, scrap steel outlet available | New steel drums, 185 kg | 150 kg drums | Identical handling, but 5.41 drums per tonne instead of 6.67 — a fifth fewer drums to open, store and scrap |
| Melter that accepts blocks, forklift rated for 1 tonne | Jumbo bags or meltable poly bags | Drums | No steel to cut or dispose of, and 20 MT per container instead of 14.4 MT for the same freight |
| Asphalt plant with heated binder storage, no jetty access | Bitutainer or heated tank container | Drums, once volume is steady | Discharges straight into your own tank; the cheapest way to move liquid binder in container-sized lots |
| Terminal with heated shore tanks and a berth | Bulk vessel parcel | Any containerised format | Lowest cost per tonne by a wide margin; quantity established by independent survey on a weight basis |
| Roofing, waterproofing or pipe-coating plant on oxidized grades | 25 kg cartons or kraft bags, palletised | Paving grades in any bagged form | A softening point well above ambient holds the block shape; 25 kg units charge a kettle without lifting gear |
| Binder specification prohibits additives of any kind | Drums, or jumbo bags with a strip-off liner | Meltable film bags | The melt-in film enters the binder. Where the specification does not allow it, the cost advantage is irrelevant |
| Destination on a 40 t road limit or with strict axle enforcement | Drums, or containers loaded below plate weight | Maximum-payload bitutainers | The container gross weight has to satisfy the truck as well as the ship; plan the load to the road limit, not the CSC plate |
Put in the tonnage you intend to buy and compare what each packing format does to it: the unit count you would have to open at destination, how many 20-foot slots the order occupies, and the gross weight per container that has to clear the road limit at the far end.
New steel drums at 150, 180 or 185 kg net; one-tonne jumbo bags with a strip-off release liner; one-tonne meltable poly bags whose film enters the mix; 25 kg cartons and multi-wall kraft bags for oxidized grades; bitutainers and heated ISO tank containers at 20 to 25 MT; and bulk vessel parcels. Which one is right depends far more on the equipment at the discharge point than on the price of the packing.
Eighty new steel drums, loaded as forty per tier in two tiers. That gives 12 MT at a 150 kg net fill, 14.4 MT at 180 kg and 14.8 MT at 185 kg. The count is set by the internal dimensions of the container rather than by weight, so it does not change with the fill size.
Because it carries no more weight. A 40-foot general purpose container has the same 30,480 kg maximum gross weight as a 20-foot one but a tare around 3.7 tonnes instead of 2.2, so its payload is about 26.7 tonnes against 28.2 tonnes for the 20-foot. Its extra 34 m³ of space is unusable for a cargo as dense as bitumen. Two 20-foot containers carry 160 drums; a 40-foot can legally take only about 133.
A jumbo bag has a heat-resistant release liner inside a woven outer bag; both are stripped off at destination and the bitumen block goes into the melter. A meltable poly bag uses a film formulated to dissolve into the binder at mixing temperature, so the whole package is charged and no packaging waste remains. Both load 20 bags and 20 MT per 20-foot container. The meltable bag introduces a small quantity of polymer into the binder, so check that your specification permits it.
Yes. At minimum a forklift with a drum clamp and a drum decanter, drum melter or hot-oil melting unit. Drums should never be heated with an open flame against a dry wall — it carbonises the binder and creates a serious fire risk. You also need covered storage on a hard standing and a disposal or scrap route for roughly 1.6 tonnes of residue-coated steel per container.
Bulk vessel, then bitutainer or heated tank container, then one-tonne bags, then 185 kg drums, then 180 kg, with 150 kg drums the most expensive of the paving formats. The gap comes from two directions at once: smaller units cost more per tonne to make, and they put fewer tonnes into the same container slot. Cartons and kraft bags sit outside that ladder — they exist for oxidized grades and for end users with no lifting gear, and their cost is driven by the number of units handled rather than by freight. Compare landed cost per tonne of product delivered rather than the quoted price of the binder.
Not for bitumen bought against a laboratory specification. A reconditioned drum carries traces of whatever it held before, and hot binder entering at 140 to 160 °C dissolves them into the batch, where they surface as a solubility or ash result outside the limit — by which time the cargo is at the discharge port and nobody can prove which drum caused it. Silence in the contract does not help you: a contract that says only "steel drums" is satisfied by a reconditioned one. Write "new, unused, first-use steel drums", require the pre-shipment inspection to report on packing condition and not only on product quality, and confirm that the invoiced weight is net of a drum tare of roughly 18 to 22 kg.
Solid bitumen in drums, bags or cartons at ambient temperature is not regulated as dangerous goods. Bitumen carried at or above 100 °C falls under UN 3257, Elevated temperature liquid, n.o.s., Class 9, with the placarding and documentation that follows — which catches a bitutainer or tank container moved hot, though a unit that has been allowed to cool below that threshold in transit is a different case. Confirm the classification with the carrier against the Safety Data Sheet before booking. Petroleum bitumen is classified under HS heading 2713.20 for customs in either case.
Packing decides how the material is stored and how long it keeps.
Send the grade, the tonnage, the destination port and — most usefully — what you can heat and lift at the discharge point. The offer will come back with the packing that suits that capability, the container count it implies, and the gross weight per container so your haulier can confirm it against the local road limit before anything is booked.