Air vs sea freight

The short answer

Air takes about 7–14 days. Sea takes about 75–100 days.

Air costs much more per unit. Sea costs much less, but your money sits in a container for three months.

Small, light, urgent, or valuable for its weight: fly it. Big, heavy, cheap for its weight, and planned ahead: ship it.

They are priced differently, and that is the whole game

Air is priced by weight. Sea is priced by space, in cubic metres (CBM).

So a big light product like plastic containers or foam is punished by air and suits sea. Something small and dense like phone parts is fine by air.

Air has one more trick. If your box is large and light, you are billed on its size, not on what it weighs.

The mistake that eats the savings

Somebody chooses sea to save money, then realises they need the goods before the ship lands. They fly a second batch in to cover the gap, and pay for shipping twice.

Choose by the date you need to sell, not only by the freight quote.

Volumetric weight, with real numbers

The airline bills whichever is bigger: what the box weighs, or what its size says it should weigh. The sum is length × width × height in centimetres, divided by 6,000.

A carton of 60 × 50 × 40 cm is 120,000 cubic centimetres. Divide by 6,000 and you get 20, so it counts as 20 kg.

If it really weighs 12 kg, you still pay for 20. If it really weighs 28 kg, you pay for 28.

This is why anything boxed with a lot of air is expensive to fly, and why we ask for your carton sizes, not just the weight, before we advise you.

What a sea quote should include

Not every sea quote covers the same things. Comparing a bare ocean rate against an all in rate is how people think they found a bargain. Ask what the number covers.

• Moving the goods inside China, from the factory to the warehouse or the port.
• The ocean freight itself, priced per CBM when you share a container.
• The charges at the Nigerian end, and customs clearing.
• Delivery from the port to your city.

Sharing a container

You almost never need a whole container. In consolidation, also called groupage or LCL, your cartons travel with other people's goods and you pay for the space you use.

It also solves a problem you will meet early. Buy from three different factories, have all three deliver to one warehouse in China, and everything leaves as one shipment with one bill.

That is how small importers ship like big ones, and it is how we send most customer orders.

Plan around the Chinese holidays

Chinese New Year falls in late January or February, and production stops for two to four weeks.

The weeks before it are worse than the shutdown. Factories rush, quality slips, freight space sells out and rates climb. There is a second, shorter break in the first week of October.

The rule is simple. If your goods must arrive before those windows, order earlier than feels necessary. A shipment that misses the cutoff does not slip by a week. It slips by a month.