A Euro pallet is 1200 × 800 mm and a UK standard pallet is 1200 × 1000 mm. Both are ISO 6780 footprints and both are 1200 mm long, so the difference is 200 mm of width — enough to change how many fit across a trailer, how they sit in racking, and whether a customer accepts them.
Written and reviewed by the Beecraft UK Sales & Technical Team · Last reviewed · Beecraft UK Ltd, company no. 2460437
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What are the dimensions of a Euro pallet and a UK standard pallet?
Two numbers cover most of it. A Euro pallet is 1200 × 800 mm. A UK standard pallet is 1200 × 1000 mm. Both appear in ISO 6780, the international standard that sets out principal dimensions and tolerances for flat pallets used in intercontinental materials handling.
Because they share the 1200 mm long side, the two behave the same way down the length of a trailer. Everything that separates them comes from the other side: 200 mm of width, plus the habits of the markets that adopted each one. ISO 6780 recognises six principal footprints in all; three turn up regularly in British trade and the rest you only meet if you import.
| Footprint (mm) | Usually called | Where you meet it | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1200 × 800 | Euro, EUR/EPAL footprint | European road freight, retail supply into the EU | Two sit across a European trailer with working room to the sides. |
| 1200 × 1000 | UK standard, GKN | UK distribution, racking, grocery and industrial traffic | The British default, and the better user of container width. |
| 1219 × 1016 | North American, 48 × 40 in | US and Canadian trade | The 48 × 40 in pallet written in millimetres. |
| 1140 × 1140 | Square, drum pallet | Chemicals, drums, IBC bases, Australasian traffic | Square footprints turn in any direction, which suits round loads. |
| 1100 × 1100 | Asian square | Japan, South Korea, much of South East Asia | Common on inbound container traffic. |
| 1067 × 1067 | 42 × 42 in square | North American drum and speciality traffic | Rare in the UK; usually arrives under chemical loads. |
Which footprint should you use for which destination?
The pallet follows the customer, not the other way round. Work backwards from where the goods end up and the decision usually makes itself.
UK domestic distribution. Use 1200 × 1000. British racking, goods-in bays, conveyor infeeds and grocery supply chains are configured for it.
Road freight into the EU. Use 1200 × 800. Continental curtainsiders, retail-ready display systems and narrow-aisle racking are built around the Euro footprint, and a UK standard pallet arriving into a Euro-configured warehouse becomes someone else’s handling problem.
Deep-sea container export. Here the intuition is wrong. A 40 ft container gives you roughly 2.35 m of internal width. Two 1000 mm sides use 2000 mm of it; two 800 mm sides use 1600 mm and leave 750 mm of dead space you still pay to ship. Both give the same number of floor positions, so the wider pallet moves more product for the same freight bill. The arithmetic is in our guide to how many pallets fit in a 40 ft container.
Air freight. Footprint matters less than tare weight: every kilo of pallet is a kilo of product you did not send. That is why exporters around Heathrow and the West London freight corridor lean towards lightweight moulded footprints rather than timber.
One line each
- 1200 × 1000 — UK domestic. The default unless told otherwise.
- 1200 × 800 — road freight into Europe, and narrow-aisle racking.
- Sea container — 1200 × 1000 uses the width better than Euro does.
- Air — choose on weight, not on footprint.
What is an EPAL pallet, and does it apply to plastic?
This is where the terms get muddled, and it costs people money.
“Euro pallet” means two different things. Loosely, the 1200 × 800 mm footprint. Strictly, a licensed wooden EUR/EPAL pallet: built to a fixed specification, produced and repaired only by licensed plants, inspected, branded and exchangeable one for one within a pool of identical pallets.
That exchange pool is the entire point of an EPAL pallet, and it is a timber system. A plastic pallet on the same footprint is not an EPAL pallet and cannot be exchanged as one. It fits the same racking, trailer and automated line, but it sits outside the pooled timber world.
That is really a decision about ownership model. Pooled timber suits open-loop traffic where pallets disperse across many receiving depots and never come back. Owned plastic suits closed loops, contract manufacturing and own-fleet delivery, and it removes per-trip hire, transfer paperwork and non-return charges from the equation.
The other difference you feel on the floor is consistency. A wooden EUR-pallet is typically around 25 kg, swells with moisture, loses boards and drifts out of tolerance as it ages. A moulded pallet holds its dimensions across thousands of cycles, which is what an automated infeed actually cares about. The polymer behind that behaviour is covered on our materials page.
Do Euro pallets need ISPM 15 heat treatment?
Wooden ones do. Plastic ones fall outside the rules entirely, and this is the single clearest advantage plastic has on export traffic.
ISPM 15 is the international phytosanitary standard for wood packaging material. Solid wood packaging moving in international trade must be debarked, heat treated to a core temperature of 56°C for at least 30 continuous minutes (or treated by an approved alternative), and marked with the compliance stamp. That includes pallets, crates, dunnage and bracing.
The standard applies to solid wood. It explicitly does not apply to processed, non-solid materials — and plastic is one of them. A plastic pallet needs no treatment, no stamp and no certificate under ISPM 15, because there is nothing in it that can carry a timber pest.
Getting it wrong with timber is not a warning letter. Non-compliant wood packaging can be refused entry, treated at your cost, or destroyed at the border, with the consignment sitting on it — and anyone who has had a box held at a port knows what that costs in demurrage before the goods are even discussed. Exporters shipping through the Thames Gateway and the Essex port cluster ask us about this more than any other export question.
One caution: ISPM 15 covers the packaging, not just the pallet. If you brace a plastic pallet with wooden dunnage, that wood still has to comply.
Should you standardise on one footprint or run both?
Run both only where both are genuinely earning their place.
Every extra footprint costs you somewhere: a second racking configuration, a second stock of empties, a worse unit price on each, and a trickle of handling errors where the wrong size goes to the wrong customer. Operations running three or four sizes usually find that two cover everything.
The case for running both is legitimate when you have real volume in each direction: forcing one footprint onto both destinations wastes more in freight utilisation than it saves in pallet purchasing, and freight is nearly always the larger number.
Lopsided volumes are what catch people out. If ninety per cent of your traffic is domestic and the European work is a handful of consignments a month, the second footprint is costing you more in storage and admin than the freight saving returns. The numbers that settle it are your loaded pallet height, your racking beam spacing and your split of destinations — send those over and we will work through it. Our wider guide to UK plastic pallet sizes covers the smaller footprints, and the full range sits on the pallets page.
What else do people ask about Euro and UK pallet sizes?
What size is a Euro pallet in mm?
1200 × 800 mm. That is the footprint; pallet height varies by design, so quote the footprint when you order and state the loaded height separately. It is one of the six principal sizes in ISO 6780.
What is the difference between a Euro pallet and a UK standard pallet?
Two hundred millimetres of width. A Euro pallet is 1200 × 800 mm; a UK standard pallet is 1200 × 1000 mm. They share the 1200 mm long side, so they load the same way along a trailer, but they are not interchangeable in racking or in an automated system.
Is a plastic 1200 × 800 pallet an EPAL pallet?
No. EPAL licences wooden EUR-pallets built to a fixed specification and runs the exchange pool around them. A plastic pallet on the same footprint fits the same racking and vehicles, but is not part of that pool. You own it instead of hiring it.
Do plastic pallets need an ISPM 15 stamp for export?
No. ISPM 15 applies to solid wood packaging, which must be debarked, heat treated to 56°C for at least 30 continuous minutes and marked. It explicitly excludes processed non-solid materials, so plastic needs no treatment or mark. Wooden dunnage in the same consignment still has to comply.
Can Euro pallets go into UK racking?
Often, but check first. A bay set for 1200 × 1000 will usually accept a 1200 × 800 pallet, but the runners then span a different part of the beam and the published racking load no longer applies. Any change of footprint is one your racking inspector should know about.
Which footprint is better for exporting in a container?
Usually 1200 × 1000. A container gives around 2.35 m of internal width, and two 1000 mm sides use that better than two 800 mm sides. Both give the same floor positions in a 40 ft box, so the UK footprint moves more product for the same freight.
Where do these figures come from?
Sources & further reading
- ISO 6780:2003 — Flat pallets for intercontinental materials handling: principal dimensions and tolerances – www.iso.org
- GOV.UK — Wood packaging material for import and export: the ISPM 15 heat-treatment and marking rules that apply to solid timber packaging, and the processed materials they exclude – www.gov.uk
- SEMA — Storage Equipment Manufacturers’ Association guidance on racking safety and load ratings – www.sema.org.uk
Where to go next
Which footprint should you be buying?
Send us your destinations, your loaded pallet height and your racking dimensions. We will recommend a footprint and price it the same working day.
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