How to Size an Aluminum Tin Without Under-Filling the Label

The formula, and the worked example, in full:

Product space (ml) = Net weight (g) ÷ Density (g/ml)
Brim volume needed (ml) = Product space × (1 + headspace fraction)

For a 100 g body balm with a measured density of 0.95 g/ml and a 10% headspace allowance:
100 ÷ 0.95 = 105.3 ml of product
105.3 × 1.10 = 115.8 ml of brim volume required

Everything below is about the distance between that 115.8 ml and the number a supplier prints on a product page.

Fill-to-Body Reference Chart

Before the detail, the chart. These are the four standard bodies we tool, with the external envelope volume calculated from the published outside dimensions (πr²h), and the labelled quantity each is sold under. The right-hand column is the number worth staring at.

Body	Outside Ø × height	External envelope (πr²h)	Sold as	Label ÷ envelope
10 g tin	41 mm × 18 mm	23.8 ml	10 g	42%
15 ml container	41 mm × 18 mm	23.8 ml	15 ml	63%
100 g tin	84 mm × 25 mm	138.5 ml	100 g	72%
200 ml container	82 mm × 43 mm	227.1 ml	200 ml	88%

The ratio of labelled quantity to external envelope runs from 42% to 88% across four bodies from the same factory. That spread is not sloppiness. Two of these tins share one shell — the 10 g and the 15 ml are the same 41 × 18 mm body carrying different labels, because one is sold by weight and one by volume. And the shallower a tin is, the larger a share of its envelope is taken by the lid seat and the base radius, neither of which holds product.

The practical consequence: you cannot scale a tin size by eye from one product to another. If your last tin worked, that tells you about that product at that density in that body. It tells you nothing about the next one.

Why a “100 g” Tin Will Not Hold 100 g of Every Product

A tin has a volume. A label has a weight. The two only agree at a density of exactly 1.00 g/ml, and almost nothing you are filling has that density.

Take the same 100 g label across a realistic density range and the product space required moves by more than 20 ml:

3-Number Fill Check
Your density (g/ml)	Product space for 100 g	+10% headspace	Fits the 84 × 25 mm body?
0.85	117.6 ml	129.4 ml	Ask — close to the envelope
0.90	111.1 ml	122.2 ml	Ask — confirm brim volume
0.95	105.3 ml	115.8 ml	Likely
1.00	100.0 ml	110.0 ml	Likely
1.05	95.2 ml	104.8 ml	Yes
Measure yours: ______	______	______	______

The 3-Number Fill Check is the whole method, and it is three numbers, not three pages: your measured density, your net weight, and the supplier’s stated brim volume. If any one of the three is missing from the conversation, the size has not been decided — it has been guessed.

Measure the density yourself, once, and stop estimating it: weigh an empty container, fill it with your finished product at your normal filling temperature, weigh it again, divide the product weight by the container’s known volume. Do it on finished product, not on the base — pigments, actives and fragrance all move the number, and a whipped or aerated product can differ from its own unwhipped version by 20% or more.

If your product density has never been measured on the finished formula, measure it before you approve a drawing — a sizing decision taken on an assumed density is a decision you will pay to repeat.

Why the Envelope Volume on a Drawing Is Never the Volume You Can Fill

Everything in the chart above is external envelope volume — the cylinder the tin occupies on a pallet. Four things live inside that envelope and none of them hold product:

Envelope-to-Brim Deduction Matrix
Deduction	Why it exists	Your tin (fill in from the drawing)
Wall thickness, both sides	Two walls come off the diameter, so the internal radius drops by roughly the wall thickness	______ mm
Base radius / draw corner	A drawn base is not a flat plate; the corner has a radius that eats volume	______ mm
Lid seat depth	On a screw-top the thread engages inside the top of the body; that depth is closure, not product	______ mm
Declared headspace	Your own allowance for expansion, filling tolerance and lid clearance	______ %
Brim volume actually available	What is left	______ ml

Use this as a request, not just as a worksheet. The sentence to put in your email is: “Please state the brim-full internal volume in millilitres for this body, measured with water, and the method you used.” A supplier who has the number will send it in a line. A supplier who sends back the outside dimensions again has not measured it, and you have learned something useful either way.

If your fill weight lands within 10% of the envelope volume, ask for the brim-full figure in writing before you approve the drawing.

How to Order Headspace Instead of Discovering You Have None

Headspace is the gap between the top of the product and the underside of the lid. It is not waste. It absorbs four things, and if you have not allowed for all four you will find out which one you forgot after the first container arrives.

4-Line Headspace Register
What the headspace absorbs	Typical driver	Your allowance
Filling tolerance	Your filler’s repeatability; a volumetric head and a hot pour vary differently	______ %
Thermal expansion	Product filled hot and cooled, or a container shipped through a hot port	______ %
Product movement	Balms that slump, whipped textures that settle, powders that compact in transit	______ %
Lid clearance	Contact between product and lid marks the surface and can push product into the thread	______ %
Total headspace to specify	Sum, not the largest	______ %

Two of these are commonly forgotten. Thermal expansion matters most for anything poured warm — balms, salves and waxes are filled molten and shrink as they set, which changes the surface but not the volume you had to allow at the moment of filling. Lid clearance matters most for the products that look best in the jar: a surface that has kissed the lid is a surface a customer photographs and complains about.

If your product is poured above ambient temperature, state the fill temperature on the drawing — the headspace allowance follows from it, not the other way round.

Why Your Capper Jams on a Tin That Passed the Sample Check

A sample check confirms that a tin exists and looks right. It does not confirm that fifty thousand of them will run. The gap between those two things is dimensional consistency, and it shows up on two axes.

2-Axis Diameter Lock
Axis	What to specify	Why it stops a line
Body outside diameter	Nominal + tolerance band, and the ovality permitted at the mouth	A star wheel or puck is cut for one diameter; an oval mouth passes a hand check and jams a transfer
Closure engagement	Thread pitch, number of turns to seat, and the application torque the closure is designed for	An automatic capping head applies a set torque; a thread designed for a different one strips or backs off
Sample source	Samples taken from the production tool, not a sample tool	A hand-made or single-cavity sample tells you nothing about run-to-run variation
Sample size	20 pieces minimum, measured, not one “golden” unit	One unit has no spread; spread is the thing you are buying

All four of our standard bodies use a screw-top closure, so the thread is the interface that has to match your line. Ask for the torque the thread is designed around and give your capper’s setting in return. Those two numbers agreeing before tooling is cheaper than either party discovering it afterwards.

If you are running an automatic capper, send us your applied torque setting with your drawing and we will confirm it against the closure before samples are made.

How to Add a Size Without Paying for a New Draw Tool

A drawing tool is cut for one diameter. Height can often be varied within a range on the same tool; diameter cannot be varied at all. That single asymmetry decides most of what a first order costs.

2-Diameter Family Audit
Family	Bodies in it	Free to change	Needs new tooling
41 mm family	10 g tin, 15 ml container (same shell)	Label, finish, print, closure colour	Any diameter other than 41 mm
82–84 mm family	100 g tin (84 × 25), 200 ml container (82 × 43)	Height within the tooled range, label, finish, print	A diameter between or outside these
Your planned SKUs	______	______	______

Run this audit before you draw anything. If you are launching three SKUs, three sizes inside one diameter family cost one tooling decision; three sizes across three diameters cost three. The cheapest sizing decision available to a new brand is usually not a clever size — it is staying inside a family that already exists.

Before you commit to a bespoke diameter, send us your target volumes and we will tell you which existing body is closest and what it would cost you to accept it.

Why a Tin That Fits Your Product May Not Fit Your Carton

Diameter is not only a tooling decision. It propagates outward into the shipper carton, the pallet pattern and the freight invoice, and those consequences arrive after the tin has been approved — usually from a different department.

3-Level Pack-Out Check
Level	What changes when the diameter changes	Your figures
Primary → inner	How many tins fit a row and a layer; whether they nest, need a divider, or rattle	______ per layer
Inner → shipper	Shipper internal dimensions, layer count, and whether the last layer is part-full — a part-full layer is paid-for air	______ per carton
Shipper → pallet	Cartons per layer and layers per pallet against your destination’s standard pallet footprint	______ per pallet
Pallet → container	Pallets per 20’ or 40’ container; whether you are shipping product or shipping space	______ per container

The check is worth running because the arithmetic compounds. A few millimetres of diameter that changes tins-per-layer from seven to six changes cartons-per-pallet, which changes pallets-per-container, and none of that shows up in the unit price you compared when you chose the size. On a full container of small tins the difference between a good pack-out and a careless one is routinely larger than the difference between two suppliers’ quotations.

This is also the argument for the 2-Diameter Family Audit above. Staying inside a diameter family does not only save tooling — it keeps one shipper carton, one pallet pattern and one set of dimensional weights across your whole range, which is worth more administratively than most brands expect.

If you are shipping a full container, send us your destination pallet size and we will run the pack-out before you commit to a diameter rather than after.

Why Two Quotes for “0.3 mm Wall” Are Not the Same Quote

Wall thickness is where quotes diverge invisibly. Our 41 mm bodies run 0.25 mm and the larger bodies run 0.3 mm, and both are customisable — but “0.3 mm” on its own is not a specification. It is a nominal figure with three missing pieces.

3-Point Wall Spec Lock
Point	Ask for	What it changes
Where it is measured	Wall at mid-height, at the base corner, and at the mouth	Drawing thins the wall unevenly; a nominal figure without a location is unverifiable
Which sheet specification	The aluminium sheet specification and temper the body is drawn from	Sheet is bought to a standard such as ASTM B209/B209M-21a; alloy and temper change how the wall behaves, not just how thick it is
What tolerance	The permitted band, in the same units, on the same measurement points	A quote against a tighter band is a different quote, and should be

The reason to care is not pedantry. A screw thread is rolled into the wall after the body is drawn, and a thread needs enough metal to hold its form — which is why the larger bodies here run 0.3 mm rather than 0.25 mm. Pushing a wall below what the thread wants produces a tin that passes inspection and then, months later, produces lids that no longer seat.

ASTM B209/B209M-21a, Standard Specification for Aluminum and Aluminum-Alloy Sheet and Plate, is the document behind the sheet itself. Naming the sheet specification in your RFQ costs you one line and moves the conversation from a number to a material.

If two quotations differ by more than 10% at the same wall thickness, ask both to state the measurement point and the tolerance band before you assume one is cheaper.

When Under-Fill Stops Being a Packaging Problem and Becomes a Legal One

Everything above is about fit. This section is about what happens when the fit is tight and the fill line has a bad day, because at that point net content stops being your packaging engineer’s problem and becomes a weights-and-measures one.

Two regimes matter for most exporters, and they are not the same regime.

2-Market Net-Content Gate
	United States	European Union (℮-marked)
Governing document	NIST Handbook 133 (2026 Ed.), Checking the Net Contents of Packaged Goods	Council Directive 76/211/EEC, with WELMEC Guide 6.4 as the packer’s guide
Average rule	The average net quantity of the lot must equal or exceed the labelled amount	The average quantity of the prepackages shall not be less than the nominal quantity
Individual-package rule	A shortage beyond the Maximum Allowable Variation (MAV) is an unreasonable shortage	Only a small number may fall below nominal minus the tolerable negative error (TNE); none may fall below nominal minus twice the TNE
Worked figure	MAV varies with labelled quantity — take it from the current edition’s table for your declared amount	TNE at 100 g nominal = 4.5 g; at 200 g nominal = 9 g
Your headroom	______	______

The sentence worth quoting to whoever signs off your fill target comes from NIST Handbook 133 itself: “Unreasonable shortages are not generally permitted, even when overages in other packages in the same lot, shipment, or delivery compensate for such shortage.” Averaging up does not rescue individual short packs.

Read that against the EU side and the design implication is the same in both markets: a tin sized so that hitting the label requires filling to the brim has no room for the normal variation of a filling line. The container has to be able to hold more than the label, comfortably, on the worst unit of the run — not on the best one.

For cosmetics specifically, ISO 22715:2006, Cosmetics — Packaging and labelling, is the international standard covering packaging and labelling requirements for cosmetic products, maintained by ISO/TC 217 and confirmed on review in 2022. It is the document to hand your labelling designer alongside the destination market’s own rules.

Before you sign off a fill target, run the 3-Number Fill Check against the destination market’s individual-package rule — not just against the average.

A Worked Example, From Fill Weight to Purchase Order

Everything above in one pass. The scenario: a soy-blend container candle, launching into the EU with an ℮-marked 150 g declaration, filled on a semi-automatic hot-pour line.

6-Step Size Decision Trace
Step	Figure	Where it came from	Your version
1. Measure density	0.90 g/ml	Measured on finished, scented, dyed wax at pour temperature — not taken from a supplier datasheet for the base wax	______
2. Product space	150 ÷ 0.90 = 166.7 ml	3-Number Fill Check	______
3. Headspace	12% → 186.7 ml brim volume needed	4-Line Headspace Register: hot pour, wick assembly clearance, lid contact	______
4. Candidate body	82 × 43 mm, envelope 227.1 ml	Fill-to-Body Reference Chart — the only standard body above 186.7 ml	______
5. Confirm brim volume	Request in writing	Envelope-to-Brim Deduction Matrix — 227.1 ml is the envelope, not the fillable volume	______
6. Check against the market rule	TNE at 150 g nominal, from the WELMEC table	2-Market Net-Content Gate — the individual-package rule, not just the average	______

Read step 4 and step 5 together, because that is where this example gets interesting. The envelope is 227.1 ml and the requirement is 186.7 ml, which looks like 40 ml of comfort. But the envelope is not the brim volume: subtract two walls, a base radius and the lid seat and the real figure is lower — possibly by more than the margin appears to allow. A 40 ml cushion against an envelope figure can be a 5 ml cushion against the number that matters, and 5 ml on a hot-pour line is not a cushion at all.

That is the entire argument of this article in one line: the comparison has to be requirement against brim volume, never requirement against envelope. Everything else — the tooling audit, the pack-out, the wall specification — follows a size that has already been decided correctly.

Note also what step 1 rules out. Taking 0.90 g/ml from a wax supplier’s datasheet for unscented base wax, when the finished product carries 8% fragrance load and dye, produces a different density and therefore a different tin. The measurement takes ten minutes: weigh a container empty, fill it with finished product at pour temperature, weigh it again, divide the difference by that container’s known volume. Ten minutes, once, before tooling.

If you are launching a candle, send the wax blend, the fragrance load and the declared weight — density and headspace behave differently for hot-pour products and we will size against your pour temperature, not against a generic figure.

2026 Sourcing Pressure: Two-Market Labelling and Tooling Lead Time

Two things are worth planning around this year, both of which change sizing decisions rather than just paperwork.

Two-market labelling on one body. Brands increasingly launch into the US and the EU from a single production run, which means one tin carrying both a weight declaration and an ℮-marked one. The two regimes police individual packages differently, as the table above shows. Sizing to the tighter of the two at the design stage is cheaper than discovering after tooling that one market needs a different fill target on the same container.

Tooling lead time is separate from production lead time. Our own production runs 15–20 days after artwork approval across all four standard bodies, at a 5,000 pcs minimum per SKU. A bespoke diameter adds a tooling step ahead of that, and it is the step most first-time buyers forget to put in their launch plan. Run the 2-Diameter Family Audit early: choosing an existing body removes that step entirely.

If you have a launch date, tell us the date rather than the lead time you assume — we will work backwards and tell you which sizing decisions still fit.

References

1. NIST Handbook 133 (2026 Ed.), Checking the Net Contents of Packaged Goods, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Office of Weights and Measures. Chapter 1 defines the Maximum Allowable Variation (MAV) and the average requirement.
2. Council Directive 76/211/EEC of 20 January 1976, on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to the making-up by weight or by volume of certain prepackaged products.
3. WELMEC Guide 6.4 (2015), Guide for packers and importers of ℮-marked prepacked products, WELMEC — European cooperation in legal metrology. Source of the three packers’ rules and the tolerable negative error values cited above.
4. ISO 22715:2006, Cosmetics — Packaging and labelling, ISO/TC 217, confirmed on review 2022.
5. ASTM B209/B209M-21a, Standard Specification for Aluminum and Aluminum-Alloy Sheet and Plate, ASTM International.

How the Numbers in This Article Were Calculated

External envelope volumes in the reference chart are calculated as πr²h from the outside diameter and height published on our own product pages, rounded to one decimal place. They describe the cylinder the tin occupies, not the volume it can hold; the brim-full internal volume is always lower, by the deductions listed in the Envelope-to-Brim Deduction Matrix, and must be confirmed per body.

Density figures in the 3-Number Fill Check are illustrative points across a range, not measurements of any particular formulation. Product density varies with formulation, temperature and aeration and must be measured on your own finished product. Headspace percentages are allowances to be decided per product, not values we are recommending.

Standard designations, definitions and the tolerable negative error values are quoted from the documents listed under References and were checked against the issuing bodies’ own publications in September 2026. Where a figure varies by declared quantity — the MAV in particular — take it from the current edition’s own table rather than from this article.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a 100 ml tin the same as a 100 g tin?
No, and this is the single most expensive assumption in tin sizing. They are only the same at a density of exactly 1.00 g/ml. At 0.85 g/ml, 100 g of product occupies 117.6 ml — nearly 18% more space than the number on the label suggests. Run the 3-Number Fill Check before you assume the two are interchangeable.

How do I calculate what size tin I need?
Divide your net fill weight in grams by your measured product density in grams per millilitre to get the product space in millilitres, then add your headspace allowance. Compare that figure against the supplier’s brim-full internal volume, not against the outside dimensions.

What is the difference between fill volume and tin capacity?
Tin capacity, as usually quoted, is brim-full internal volume — what the body holds if filled level with its mouth. Fill volume is what you actually put in, which is capacity minus headspace. A supplier quoting capacity and a buyer thinking about fill volume can be 10% apart while both believe they agree.

Should I add headspace as a fixed millilitre figure or a percentage?
A percentage travels between sizes; a fixed figure does not. 10% of a 15 ml container is 1.5 ml, while 10% of a 200 ml container is 20 ml, and both are proportionate to the filling tolerance at that size. Specify the percentage on the drawing and let the millilitres follow.

Can I change tin height without paying for new tooling?
Height can often be varied within a range on an existing draw tool; diameter cannot be varied at all. Ask which range the specific body supports before you assume either way — and run the 2-Diameter Family Audit across all your planned SKUs at the same time, not one at a time.

Does aluminium wall thickness affect how much the tin holds?
Yes, on both axes. Two walls come off the diameter, so internal radius drops by roughly the wall thickness, and the effect is squared in the volume calculation. It matters most on small-diameter bodies: on a 41 mm tin, the wall is a much larger fraction of the radius than it is on an 84 mm one.

How many samples should I measure before approving a size?
Twenty pieces from the production tool, measured, rather than one approved by eye. One unit tells you a size exists; twenty tell you the spread, and the spread is what your filling line and your net-content compliance both depend on.

Getting a Size Confirmed

Send your net fill weight, your measured product density, your headspace allowance and your destination market. We will tell you which of the four standard bodies fits, what its brim-full volume is, and whether your fill target leaves room against that market’s individual-package rule. If none of them fits, we will say so and tell you what a bespoke diameter would add.

Send your fill figures for a size check — 5,000 pcs minimum per SKU, 15–20 days production after artwork approval, samples available before bulk. See also our screw-top body specifications.