Crate or pallet — which arrives with less breakage?
A crate is not automatically better and a pallet is not automatically cheaper. Breakage depends on three things: how the slabs stand, how voids are filled, and how the load is secured. Packaging is only the carrier for those three.
What actually differs between them?
A pallet bundle stands the slabs on edge on a pallet, straps them, and may wrap them in protective film only. A crate encloses the whole pallet in a timber frame with boards on the sides. The difference is enclosure: a crate adds a shell, which resists impact and rain better, at more cost, weight and volume.
How can a pallet still achieve low breakage?
Because breakage does not really come from having a shell or not. It comes from three things: whether slabs stand on edge, since stacking flat crushes them under their own weight; whether separators sit between slabs; and whether voids in the container are filled. Get those three right and pallets perform about as well as crates. Get them wrong and slabs crack inside a crate too.
When is a crate necessary?
Three cases: shaped pieces and thin slabs, which have little bending strength and need overall restraint; book-matched or pattern-matched sets, which are scrap if they shift; and destinations with many handling steps, multiple lifts and multiple vehicle changes. A fourth is a customer requirement — some receivers insist on opening crates for inspection.
What does a crate cost you?
Three things: weight, since crate timber often adds tens of kilos per unit, eating freight and payload; volume, so a container holds less; and unpacking, since someone on site has to open it and dispose of the waste wood. There is also a hidden cost: once closed, you cannot inspect visually in transit, so problems surface only at the end.
One hard requirement applies to any export wood packaging
Wood packaging must be treated to ISPM 15 and carry the IPPC mark, or it may be held at destination, with the cargo returned or the wood destroyed. Pallets and crates are both wood packaging and neither escapes this. It is not part of choosing between them; it is a precondition.
How do you decide? A sequence
Look at the goods first: standard large slabs go on pallets; shaped, thin and pattern-matched pieces go in crates. Then look at the route: direct sailing and a single lift suits pallets; multiple transfers suit crates. Finally look at money: convert the extra weight and volume of crates into freight and weigh it against the breakage it prevents. Compared on those three, the answer is usually clear.