618ml equates exactly to 600ml + 3% - maybe manufacturers add 3% on top because that’s the maximum allowable variance in quantities?
From a quick search, 412ml and 515ml both seem pretty common too.
I think you’re on the right track. My guess would be that they have a 3% tolerance (uncertainty, idk) with filling so they fill 600 ml but statistically it might be as much as 618. Putting 618 on the packaging lowers the price per liter a little, compared to 600.
This seems backwards from what a manufacturer would want to do. The concern with variances isn’t really having too much but having too little in the bottle. If you aimed to put exactly 600 in the bottle, you will sometimes end up below 600. It would make more sense to label it 600, aim for 618, and be confident that you’ll always fill it to at least the advertised 600.
Exactly. In Europe for example, you see the stylized “e” symbol on packaging very often. It means that a negligible amount are below the advertised volume/weight.
So if the package says 600ml, they might have to set the machine to 610ml to ensure they satisfy this condition.
Maybe they have one machine set up to fill the bottles. In one market they are required to deliver a safety margin of 3%. So they put 618 in a 600 bottle. In the other market there is no such requirement. So they write 618 on the bottle.
I thought initially it must be a round number of flounces, but it’s closer to 21 than 20floz, so IDK.
We don’t have things in that size. You’ll see drinks in 20 oz (568 ml) or 12 oz (355 ml). And naturally for larger size sodas, we have 1L and 2L bottles. The 20oz drinks may have shrunk to 16.9oz (500 ml) though. As for other stuff like shampoo or sunscreen? Those are determined by a random number generator.
Nothing stressful at all about the system.
25 years ago we had to memorize conversions and use a calculator (some calculators included a “cheat sheet”). It was 2 extra steps (convert to metric, do any needed math, convert back) but pretty routine once you got the hang of it.
Since then we’ve had Wolfram Alpha and a ton of unit converter smartphone apps. Even a basic Google query can convert most units.
In Canada we have a lot of that and I always assumed we import things from America and then just change the labels. The metric usually converts to a more reasonable number in imperial.
We get the joy of both here in the US. Both are required to be listed and either can be a nice round number but generally it is the imperial one.
I love that both are listed.
You do sometimes see nice round metric numbers, for example soft drinks (soda / pop) often come in 2 litre bottles.
I’m still unsure as to why soft drink bottles are measured in litres while milk is measured in gallons… A carton of milk (half a gallon, 1.9L) is almost as large as a bottle of soft drink (2L) so it’s strange they haven’t converged.
There’s also things like the TSA liquids limit, which is defined as exactly 100mL but commonly written as 3.4 fl oz.
Milk has been sold in gallons longer than pop has existed is my only guess for why milk hasn’t switched.
The US government has been very on board with metric, for example the US was one of the original signatories of the metric convention. It’s just not simple to mandate that people stop using traditional units and instead use the official standard units.
Pepsi and coke both have significant international business, which makes standard bottles appealing.
Additionally, in the mid seventies when the US was last making a push towards making the private sector switch Pepsi as a marketing gimmick switched to a bottle that was bigger than a typical coke bottle and also metric.
https://youtu.be/L6O4UeowF5I?si=fncOmRnbigWOrAsR
They hoped to be ahead of the curve in the US, better value than coke, and use one bottle everywhere.
What country are you in, OP?
Huh. I put 618ml in Google and hit “shopping” filter and only one item comes up in that size, a hair cream somewhat ominously named Fakeshu.
