Freight to South Africa: Air, Sea and What It Actually Costs
To import freight to South Africa you need four things handled: the goods moved from the supplier, the shipment cleared through customs, the duty and VAT paid, and the cargo delivered to your premises. Freight applies once a shipment is too heavy or too large for courier, which in practice means anything over 30 kg or longer than a metre on any side. Scott’s Shipping Services quotes the whole route as one rand figure covering all four, so there is no separate clearing bill waiting at the end.
In This Guide
- Do you need courier or freight?
- Air or sea freight?
- LCL or FCL: sharing a container or taking one
- What a landed cost has to include
- Incoterms: why quotes are not comparable
- How duty and VAT are calculated
- The costs that catch people out
- Where you are importing from
- What people bring in by freight
- Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need courier or freight?
The dividing line is size and weight, not value. Courier suits small parcels that a single person can carry. Freight takes over once the shipment is heavier than roughly 30 kg or longer than a metre in any dimension, or once you are shipping enough units that consolidating them becomes cheaper than sending them individually.
If you are buying a laptop, a pair of speakers or a box of spares, you want courier importing. If you are bringing in a pallet of stock, a gym rig, a machine or a container, you want freight.
The distinction matters because the two are priced on completely different logic. Courier is priced per kilogram against a rate card. Freight is priced on space, route, mode and consolidation, which is why a freight quote needs more information from you before anyone can give you a number.
Air or sea freight?
Sea freight is dramatically cheaper per kilogram and dramatically slower. Air freight costs multiples more and arrives in days rather than weeks. That much is obvious. The part people get wrong is treating it as a straight rate comparison.
Sea freight carries a longer cash flow tail. Your capital sits inside a container for weeks, and any congestion at either port extends that. For a business holding stock, that delay has a real cost that never appears on the freight invoice. For lower value, non urgent, heavy goods, sea still wins comfortably. For high value or time critical goods, the premium on air is often smaller than the cost of waiting.
Air freight also has a pricing quirk worth knowing before you compare quotes. It is charged on the greater of actual weight and volumetric weight, so light bulky goods are billed on the space they take up rather than what they weigh. A shipment that reads 40 kg on a scale can be invoiced as 120 kg.
We work through the trade off properly in our guide to air freight vs sea freight to South Africa.
LCL or FCL: sharing a container or taking one
Once you have settled on sea freight, this is the question that sets your price, and it is the one people skip straight past.
LCL (Less than Container Load) means your goods share a container with other people’s. You pay for the space you use, typically priced per cubic metre. It suits smaller consignments, but the cargo has to be consolidated at origin and deconsolidated on arrival, which adds handling charges and time at both ends.
FCL (Full Container Load) means you take the whole container, 20ft or 40ft, at a flat rate regardless of how full it is. Simpler, faster to release, and cheaper per cubic metre once you have enough volume to justify it.
The crossover generally sits somewhere around 13 to 15 cubic metres for a 20ft container, but it genuinely moves with the route and the season. LCL rates spike in peak season, which drags the crossover point down; in a quiet market it might not arrive until 18 or 20 cbm. Near the boundary, LCL’s per-cubic-metre handling and destination charges can quietly push the total past a flat FCL rate.
Which is why the comparison has to be made on full landed cost, door to door, rather than on the ocean rate alone. If your volume is anywhere near the line, both options are worth pricing. Send us dimensions and weights and we will price both.
What a landed cost has to include
A landed cost is the total required to get goods from the supplier to your premises with nothing left to pay afterwards. For it to deserve the name, it has to contain every one of these:
- The goods themselves. On a true freight shipment, where the supplier ships direct to port or airport and the goods leave as a documented export, sales tax in the source country comes off the price. That is different from a courier or consolidation purchase delivered to an address inside the source country, which is a domestic sale and keeps the tax on.
- Collection from the supplier and inland transport in the origin country
- Export clearance and origin port or airport handling
- The main freight leg, air or sea
- Cargo insurance, if taken
- South African arrival charges, meaning terminal handling, documentation and cargo dues
- Customs clearing and the entry itself
- Customs duty at the rate applicable to your goods
- VAT at 15%, calculated on the added tax value rather than the invoice alone
- Delivery from the port or airport to your door
If a quote leaves any of these out, the cost has not gone away. It has been deferred to a point where you have no leverage, typically once the cargo is already sitting in a South African terminal accruing storage.
Incoterms: why quotes are not comparable
Ask three forwarders to price the same shipment and you will get three very different numbers. They are usually not in disagreement. They are answering different questions.
Incoterms are the internationally agreed rules defining where the seller’s responsibility ends and yours begins. Four cover most shipments into South Africa:
EXW (Ex Works)
The supplier makes the goods available at their own premises and does nothing further. Collection, inland transport, export clearance and everything after it is yours. Lowest headline number, largest remaining obligation. Workable only if someone is managing the origin country side for you.
FOB (Free On Board)
The supplier delivers the goods, cleared for export, loaded onto the vessel at a named port. From that moment the cost and risk are yours. For most South African importers this is the sensible default, because it puts the messy domestic leg with the party best placed to handle it.
CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight)
The supplier arranges and pays freight and insurance to a named South African port. It sounds easier and frequently is not, because the supplier also chooses the destination agent, and that agent’s local charges are billed to you on arrival. Those charges are invisible when you accept the price.
DDP (Delivered Duty Paid)
The supplier delivers to your door with everything paid. Maximum convenience in theory. In practice it requires the seller to act as importer of record in a country where they have no legal presence, and the customs declarations made in your name sit outside your control. Very cheap DDP offers are cheap for a reason.
How much duty and VAT will you pay?
Duty is set by the tariff heading your goods fall under, and rates run from 0% to 45% depending on what the item is. Two consignments of identical value can attract very different duty depending purely on what is inside them.
VAT is 15%, but it is not 15% of what you paid the supplier. It is charged on the added tax value, which builds from the customs value plus duty plus a prescribed uplift. This is the single most common reason a landed cost comes in higher than people expect. Our guide to how customs value is determined in South Africa works through the calculation in full.
Both are calculated and included upfront in the figure we quote you. Where a classification question is genuinely in dispute, that is a matter for a licensed customs broker or for SARS directly rather than something to settle from a website.
Some goods also need a permit or authority in place before they arrive rather than after. All used and second-hand goods fall into this category. Finding that out at the port is expensive. Check our guide to prohibited and restricted imports before committing to an order.
The costs that catch people out
Destination charges under CIF
The supplier’s nominated agent bills you locally at rates you never agreed to. Budget for it, or avoid CIF entirely.
Demurrage and storage
Containers and cargo attract charges once free time expires, and free time is short. It starts running whether or not your paperwork is ready, which is why most demurrage bills are really documentation problems in disguise.
Classification you did not check
The tariff heading decides the rate, and headings are narrower than people assume. Two apparently similar items can sit under different headings and attract very different duty. It is worth settling before you order rather than after the goods arrive.
Currency movement
If you are paying a supplier in foreign currency and the freight separately, you are exposed twice between order and arrival. A single rand denominated quote removes that exposure.
For a broader look at where import budgets go wrong, see our guide to common importing mistakes and hidden shipping costs.
Where you are importing from
The mechanics above apply to every freight shipment. What changes by corridor is the tax position at the far end, the electrical standard, and the calendar you are working against.
- China — the Chinese New Year shutdown and what it does to your ordering deadline, and why documentation gets more scrutiny on this route
- The UK and Europe — why VAT comes off a freight purchase but not a courier one, why buying in Europe does not lower your duty, and the permit used machinery needs
- The USA — the 120V 60Hz problem on motor-driven equipment, sales tax on export sales, and what actually decides your duty rate
For wholesale sourcing specifically, our guide to ordering from Alibaba covers choosing a supplier and what to ask for before you pay a deposit.
What people bring in by freight
Freight importing suits anything too heavy or too bulky for courier. The most common categories we handle are gym and fitness equipment, industrial and workshop machinery, furniture, automotive parts, building materials, catering equipment, and bulk stock for resale.
If you are importing for a business rather than personal use, our guide to importing goods for your business covers the commercial side in more detail.
What we do not do
We do not clear goods you have already bought, and we do not handle shipments someone else has arranged. The all-inclusive price only works when we control the whole chain from the supplier to your door, because that is the only way the figure we quote can be the figure you pay. If your cargo is already on a vessel with another forwarder, what you need is a clearing agent rather than us.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an importer’s code for freight imports?
Not with Scott’s Shipping Services. We clear under our own customs licence and issue you a standard South African tax invoice, so you do not need to register with SARS or hold an importer’s code. This is one of the more common reasons businesses stall before their first import, and it is not an obstacle here.
What is included in a freight import quote?
Everything from the supplier’s premises to yours: purchase where we are buying on your behalf, inland transport, export clearance, the air or sea freight leg, South African arrival charges, customs clearing, duty, VAT and delivery to your address. It is quoted as one rand figure, confirmed before you commit, with no separate invoice on arrival.
Should I ship LCL or FCL?
It depends on volume. LCL shares a container and is priced on the space you use; FCL takes the whole container at a flat rate. FCL usually works out cheaper per cubic metre somewhere around 13 to 15 cubic metres for a 20ft container, but the crossover moves with the route and the season, and LCL’s handling charges at both ends can push a borderline shipment past a flat FCL rate. Send us dimensions and weights and we will price both.
How long does freight shipping to South Africa take?
Air freight is typically measured in days and sea freight in weeks, but the accurate answer depends on the origin, the routing, the supplier’s dispatch time and congestion at either port. We confirm timings against your specific routing at the time of booking rather than quoting a blanket figure, because a number given in the abstract is not much use for planning.
Can I import freight as an individual, or is it businesses only?
Both. Individuals import furniture, gym equipment, vehicle parts and personal effects by freight regularly. The process is the same either way, and you do not need a company or an importer’s code to use the service.
Do you handle the purchase, or only the shipping?
Both, and this is the main difference between Scott’s Shipping Services and a conventional freight forwarder. We can place the order with your supplier, pay them, and manage the shipment through to delivery, so you deal with one company and one invoice rather than coordinating a supplier, a forwarder and a clearing agent yourself. What we do not do is clear goods you have already bought or take over a shipment someone else arranged.
What if my shipment is under 30 kg?
Then courier is almost certainly cheaper and faster. Use our courier import service instead, which is built for smaller parcels and gives you an estimate in a couple of minutes.
If you’re planning your next import, don’t leave it to chance. Scott’s Shipping Services is here to make the process smooth, cost-effective, and fully compliant. Get your freight quote today using our freight quote form, or contact us for expert advice on your shipment.
