Mercator’s import team regularly handle pallet shipping from China to the UK. We recently coordinated the shipment of three pallets from China to the UK on FOB (free on board) incoterm.
FOB is a popular incoterm when arranging pallet shipping from China because if your freight forwarder in the UK is in control of the sea freight element, then all the UK landing and handling charges will be pre-agreed and quoted from the off-set. If, for example, you purchase goods from China on CFR (cost and freight) incoterm, then your supplier in China will arrange to prepay the sea freight to the UK. The issue with this is that once the shipment has arrived in the UK you will then be presented with the bill for the UK landing charges, which we often see are inflated. By utilising FOB for pallet shipping from China, these UK landing and handling charges will be quoted to you by your UK freight forwarder, such as Mercator.
Once our UK customer gave the go ahead for the shipment, our agent in China contacted the supplier (shipper) of the goods to coordinate their delivery to port for loading into a shared container on the selected sailing from Shanghai to Felixstowe.
For this LCL (less than container load) shipment, our team handled the sea freight, UK landing charges, unloading, onward delivery and UK customs clearance (including settling import VAT/duty on behalf of the importer).
Sea freight from China to the UK typically takes 45-50 days port to port. For this shipment from Shanghai to Felixstowe, the transit time was 46 days. For LCL transit times, about a week either side is required to load and unload the container.
If you have pallet shipping from China, get in touch with our team who will be glad to provide you with a quote. Our services cover all incoterms from EXW through to DAP. To contact the team, email sales@mercatorcargo.co.uk, call our office on (+44) 02392 756 575, or complete the form below and we will get back to you.
