Shipping Furniture From China to Germany

Twenty-five to thirty-two days port to port from Shenzhen to Hamburg or Bremerhaven on current Cape of Good Hope routing, and twenty-eight to thirty-six days as an LCL consignment. Add two to four weeks of production and consolidation before the sailing and about two weeks for clearance and a delivery booking. Door to door, a typical order runs fifteen to seventeen weeks from deposit.

Seats under heading 9401 and furniture under 9403 carry 0% duty into the EU; mattresses under 9404 carry 3.7%. German import VAT (Einfuhrumsatzsteuer) is 19% of the customs value plus freight plus any duty — the lowest standard rate of the European destinations we ship to. A VAT-registered business recovers it on its next return; a private importer pays it and cannot reclaim it.

Hamburg handles the most China volume and has the deepest service frequency, which usually means the shortest wait for a sailing. Bremerhaven is the alternative and occasionally discharges faster in congestion. For southern German addresses a Rotterdam or Antwerp discharge with onward trucking is sometimes quicker door to door — we quote whichever routing wins for your address rather than defaulting to the nearest German port.

Below about 15 m³, LCL. Above it, a 20 ft container is usually cheaper per cubic metre and safer for stone and solid timber. German LCL destination charges are among the higher ones in Europe, so the crossover arrives sooner than the headline per-cubic-metre rate suggests — ask for both numbers landed, not just the ocean rate.

No. We are a sourcing agent in Foshan, not a customs broker. What we do is supply the commodity codes, the packed volume per line and the documents early enough for your broker to check them against the tariff before the container is booked — which on a 0% duty route is about avoiding delay rather than avoiding cost.

Only solid-timber packaging needs treatment, and the certificate has a short life — commonly about three weeks — so it is timed close to the sailing rather than issued early. Plywood and other engineered boards are outside the rule entirely, which is why we build most crates from plywood and reserve solid timber for loads that genuinely need it. Treatment is applied before the crate is closed; swapping packaging afterwards voids it, and nobody discovers that until the container is at the far end.

Every line is measured and photographed at the warehouse and the packed dimensions are sent to you before you pay. Volume is where LCL quotations go wrong: a timber frame adds roughly a third to what it protects, loose bulky items are billed on the space they occupy, and knock-down construction with the voids inside wardrobes and sofas filled can take 15 m³ down to 12. That is a whole price band on most lanes.

Board thickness follows the weight inside: roughly 15–18 mm plywood for pieces under 100 kg, 20 mm and up with steel strapping from 100 to 500 kg, and a framed structure on forklift skids above that. Inside, 2–3 cm of clearance filled with cushioning, so the piece cannot move but is not compressed. Lids are screwed rather than nailed, so a customs inspection can be closed again properly. A crate takes three to seven days from an approved drawing.