Guides / Modular buildings
There is no published MOQ for container houses, and the absence is the useful part. A minimum order quantity is calculated per project from the loading plan and the sub-components, which is why the same product carries different minimums from different suppliers — and why the number matters less than the arithmetic behind it.
A minimum order quantity for container houses is a calculated number, not a company policy. It comes out of three things: how many units fit in a 40HQ on the packing arrangement for your unit type, the minimum production run for the panel core and thickness you specify, and how much of the finish stage is cut or tooled to order. That is why our own position is to quote it per project for a standard export order rather than publish one figure for every buyer and port, which is what our flat-pack product page states alongside the specification.
So the question worth asking a supplier is not “what is your MOQ” but “what is the MOQ made of”. Five answers make the number checkable, and they are comparable between suppliers in a way that a single figure is not.
A published minimum only works when the thing being sold is standardised. A container house is assembled from choices: the sandwich panel core and thickness, the frame gauge and galvanizing method, the floor, the door and window type, the electrical scope. Two units sharing a footprint can differ on every one of those, and each difference reaches back into what the supplier has to order before production begins.
There is a second reason, and it is the same one that stops a unit price being published: the delivered cost of a small order is dominated by freight, not by the unit. If one building fills a container, that single unit carries the whole container. If four stack into the same 40HQ on a flat-pack arrangement, the same freight is divided by four. The unit price and the order minimum are therefore two views of one loading plan.
That is also why a supplier who answers “our MOQ is X” with no destination, no unit type and no specification has told you nothing you can use. The number is downstream of those three inputs.
Four inputs decide the figure, and each one is answerable in writing.
| Input | What it changes | What to ask |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Loading plan | How many units fit one 40HQ, which decides how the freight divides across the order | How many units per 40HQ for this unit type, and on what packing arrangement |
| 2. Panel run | The minimum quantity the panel line produces for your core and thickness | EPS, rock wool or glass wool, at 50 / 75 / 100mm — and what the minimum run is for that core |
| 3. Frame batch | Main frame 2.5–3.0mm with 4mm corner posts, cut and welded as a batch rather than one at a time | Whether the frame is cut per unit or per batch, and what the batch size is |
| 4. Finish and fittings | Doors, windows, electrical fittings and floor finish, where per-unit work is less efficient than a run | Which items are cut, drilled or assembled to order rather than drawn from stock |
The specification options named here are the ones published on our flat-pack and detachable-container product pages; what the loading plan and the panel run do to a minimum is confirmed against your drawing at quotation stage.
The container is the physical constraint, and it is a hard one. A 40HQ is a fixed volume, and the packing arrangement decides how much of that volume your order fills. This is where the arithmetic behind an MOQ becomes visible, and it is also why the fifth pricing factor on our own flat-pack page is quantity with destination port rather than quantity alone.
Two consequences follow, and both are worth understanding before a quotation is compared:
None of this produces a number you can take from a website, which is the honest reason none of it is published as one. It does produce the questions that make a supplier’s number readable, and those are set out below.
A minimum order quantity looks like an obstacle when the number is quoted alone. Next to the rest of the budget it is easier to judge, because three of the five lines below behave very differently at low volume:
The practical consequence: if a small first order is part of your plan, decide whether you are buying a building or a pilot. A pilot is judged on whether the unit performs and whether the supplier communicates; a building is judged on delivered cost per unit. Treating a pilot as a cheap building is how a first order turns into a bad experience on both sides.
The minimum is quoted per project for a standard export order, so it comes back with the rest of the quotation rather than as a separate rule. Five inputs are enough: the target size, the unit type you are considering, the quantity you have in mind, the specification you want (or the use it will be put to), and the destination port. The answer arrives as a quotation with the loading plan, the specification confirmed line by line and the minimum stated against that plan.
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If the unit type is still open, the detachable versus flat-pack guide answers that question first, and the products overview covers the rest of the range.
There is no single MOQ across the Chinese modular building industry, because a minimum order quantity is calculated per project rather than set as a company policy. It follows the container loading plan for your unit type, the panel and frame specification, the finish, and the destination. A supplier who states one number for every buyer and every port is quoting a policy, not a plan. Ask what the number is made of: how many units fit in a 40HQ on that packing arrangement, what the panel order minimum is for the core you chose, and whether the destination port changes it.
Because the number is derived from three things that differ between suppliers: how efficiently their unit type packs, what they order from their panel and steel suppliers, and how much of the work in the finish stage is batch-tooled rather than done per unit. A supplier who builds from stock panels can quote low volumes. One who cuts panels to order for your specification cannot, because the panel line has its own minimum run.
A single unit is sometimes possible and usually expensive, and it is worth understanding why before you expect it. The unit price is only part of the cost of a one-off order: the container is filled with one building instead of several, so the freight element of the delivered cost is carried by that single unit. If you need one unit, ask whether it can ship as part of a consolidated container or as a sample order, and expect the answer to be quoted per project.
It should be stated separately, and it is a question worth asking in writing. Fasteners, sealant, touch-up paint and the assembly drawing set are consumables on site: they do not sell as units, so they are usually covered by the order rather than priced per unit. Confirm what is in the cartons, because on a project where the crew is assembling from a drawing, a missing consumable stops work.
It can be, because the unit type changes the packing arrangement. A flat-pack unit ships knocked down and stacks, while a unit that arrives largely assembled occupies space differently. The question to ask is not the number but the arrangement: how many units per 40HQ, on what packing plan, and what that plan requires from the panels and the frame before production starts.
When the order is no longer competing with the supplier’s other batch sizes. Most minimum quantities are an economics threshold rather than a technical one: below some volume the setup, the panel run and the inspection cost more per unit than the unit earns. As the order grows, that threshold disappears and the practical minimum becomes whatever the loading plan handles well. This is why the useful question is what changes between a small order and a standard export order, rather than what the smallest possible order is.
Ask five things: how many units fit in a 40HQ for your unit type, what the minimum run is for the panel core and thickness you want, which parts of the finish stage are cut or tooled to order, whether documents and test reports are affected by volume, and what the quotation says the minimum applies to. Those five answers tell you more than a single number does, and they are comparable between suppliers.
Ask for the loading plan that produces it. A minimum quantity that comes with units-per-40HQ, the packing arrangement and the panel run it depends on can be checked against the drawings. A minimum quantity that arrives as one sentence with no arithmetic behind it is worth a second question, and a supplier who cannot or will not show the arithmetic is telling you something useful about how the rest of the project will go.