Hectoliter (hL)

Metric (SI)Current unit

100 liters. Used for wine, beer and milk production and for fishing quotas.

1 hectoliter = 100 liters (exactly).

About the hectoliter

Large producers rarely count in single liters, so the hectoliter, 100 liters or 100 cubic decimeters, is the usual unit for beverage production and export figures. Milk, beer and wine statistics are quoted in it, and so are fishing catches and quotas. Since a cubic meter holds 1,000 liters, ten hectoliters make one cubic meter, and a hectoliter is one tenth of that larger SI volume.

Hecto- is the metric prefix for one hundred, giving the symbol hL. The unit is a practical middle step between the liter on a shop shelf and the cubic meter, and it avoids long strings of digits when production totals run to many thousands of liters. The figure used here is exactly 100 liters.

Sources: Wikipedia: Litre; Wikipedia: Cubic metre

Hectoliter conversion chart

1 hectoliter expressed in every other volume unit:

More Metric (SI) units

• liter (volume)
• milliliter (volume)
• cubic meter (volume)
• cubic centimeter (volume)
• cubic millimeter (volume)
• microliter (volume)
• centiliter (volume)
• deciliter (volume)
• meter (length)
• kilometer (length)
• centimeter (length)
• millimeter (length)
• micrometer (length)
• nanometer (length)
• picometer (length)
• decimeter (length)

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