A forwarder is not a carrier. We do not own the ship — we own the problem. That means buying space at rates a single shipper cannot get, and then handling everything the carrier will not touch: collection from your supplier, export clearance, documentation, the transfer at destination, import clearance, and the last leg to your door.

The practical difference shows up when something goes wrong. A booking platform sells you a rate and emails you when the vessel is late. A forwarder re-books you onto the next sailing, tells you before you ask, and has already spoken to the broker at the other end.

Rate and space — contracted allocation on core lanes, not a screen price with nothing behind it
Origin work — factory collection, consolidation of multiple suppliers, export declaration
Documents — bill of lading, certificate of origin, and the checks that stop an entry being queried
Destination — import entry by a licensed local broker, duty and tax settled, delivery to the door
One contact — the person who quoted it is the person who tells you it sailed

Transit time

How long shipping from China takes

Ocean freight from China takes roughly 16 to 24 days to the US west coast, 28 to 38 days to the US east coast, 30 to 40 days to northern Europe and 18 to 28 days to Australia, port to port. Air freight runs 4 to 9 days on the same lanes. Add the inland legs at both ends, and add customs clearance at destination.

Destination	Main gateways	Sea freight	Air freight
United States — West Coast	Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle	16–24 days	4–7 days
United States — East Coast	New York, Savannah, Houston	28–38 days	4–7 days
United Kingdom	Felixstowe, Southampton	30–38 days	5–8 days
Northern Europe	Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg	30–40 days	5–8 days
Australia	Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Fremantle	18–28 days	5–9 days
Canada	Vancouver, Prince Rupert, Montreal	18–30 days	5–9 days
Singapore & Malaysia	Singapore, Port Klang	5–12 days	3–6 days
UAE & Gulf	Jebel Ali, Dammam, Hamad	18–26 days	4–8 days
South Africa	Durban, Cape Town	25–34 days	6–10 days
Brazil	Santos, Paranagua, Navegantes	32–42 days	6–10 days

Port-to-port sailing time on direct services. Transhipment adds 5 to 10 days, LCL adds 3 to 7 days at each end for consolidation, and peak season stretches the top of every range. We quote the realistic number rather than the brochure one.

Coverage

The lanes we run, and what they really take

Port-to-port ranges from Chinese base ports. Add the inland leg at both ends, and add clearance time at destination — the numbers below are the sailing, not the door-to-door.

Intra-Asia

4–16 days

Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines

Short sea lanes with weekly or better frequency. Rates are low enough that the inland legs at both ends often cost more than the ocean freight.

West Coast South America

28–38 days

Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador

Direct calls from Shanghai, Ningbo, Yantian and Qingdao. Callao and San Antonio take most of the volume; Buenaventura is the Colombian Pacific gateway.

East Coast South America

32–42 days

Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina

Santos, Paranagua and Navegantes into Brazil, Montevideo for Uruguay. Brazilian compliance is the long pole here, not the sailing.

North America

16–30 days

United States, Canada, Mexico

West coast is the fast option; Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas feed the Mexican manufacturing belt with rail behind them.

Europe and Mediterranean

30–40 days

Netherlands, Germany, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey

Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg and Felixstowe on the north range; Valencia, Genoa and Piraeus in the Mediterranean.

Africa

25–38 days

Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Côte d'Ivoire

Where duty-paid service earns its keep — clearance, not the vessel, decides when cargo is actually available.

Middle East

18–26 days

UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan

Jebel Ali as the regional hub, with onward road distribution across the GCC.

China–Europe rail

18–28 days

Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechia and onward

Roughly half the sea transit at a fraction of air cost. Worth it when the calendar is tight but the budget is not unlimited.

Live rates for these lanes are published on the freight rates pages, and the clearance requirements for each destination are on the customs clearance pages.

Choosing a mode

Full container or shared container?

The honest answer is volume. Under about 15 CBM a shared container is almost always cheaper; above it you are paying LCL rates for space you could have had for less by taking the whole box. The rest of the decision is about risk and handling.

	FCL — full container	LCL — shared container
Best at	15 CBM and up, or heavy cargo	2–15 CBM, mixed suppliers
Priced by	The box: 20GP, 40GP, 40HQ	Per CBM or per 1,000 kg, whichever is greater
Handling	Sealed at origin, opened at destination	Consolidated and deconsolidated — more touches
Transit	Fastest — no consolidation wait	Add 3–7 days each end for CFS work
Damage risk	Lower; your cargo only	Higher; stacked with other shippers' freight
Destination cost	Predictable, one set of terminal charges	CFS and deconsolidation fees vary by port

Heavy and dense cargo flips the maths earlier than the CBM rule suggests. Steel, stone, machinery and tiles often hit an LCL weight ceiling well before they fill the volume — at that point a 20GP is both cheaper and safer.

Live Pricing Examples

Contract rates as filed. Indicative, but not invented.

Route	Mode	Rate (USD/KG)	Transit
China → Germany	🚢 Sea	USD 12	25-50 days	View →
China → France / Poland / Czech / Hungary / Slovakia / Austria / Netherlands / Belgium	🚢 Sea	USD 14	25-50 days	View →
China → Spain / Italy / Croatia / Sweden	🚢 Sea	USD 15	25-50 days	View →
China → Spain / Italy / Croatia / Sweden	🚢 Sea	USD 15	25-50 days	View →
China → France / Poland / Czech / Hungary / Slovakia / Austria / Netherlands / Belgium	🚢 Sea	USD 14	25-50 days	View →
China → France / Poland / Czech / Hungary / Slovakia / Austria / Netherlands / Belgium	🚢 Sea	USD 14	25-50 days	View →

Browse All Routes →

Multimodal freight hub handling rail, road and sea legs in China

Container yard operations before vessel cut-off

Based in ChinaContainer freight to 170+ discharge ports

Who you are dealing with

An ocean desk in China, not a price-comparison site

We are a China-based freight forwarder. The calculator on this page is free and always will be — it exists because the hardest part of importing from China is finding out what the shipment will actually cost before you commit to a supplier.

Behind it sits the same team that books the cargo: air out of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Hong Kong, ocean from Yantian, Nansha, Ningbo and Shanghai, and China–Europe rail from Xi’an, Chengdu and Chongqing.

Air, sea and rail Ocean, rail and air all booked on our own desk — so the mode we recommend follows your date, not our margin.
Any trade term EXW, FOB, CIF, CIP or fully duty-paid — quoted the way your contract is written, with the cost split stated up front.
Live rate database 130+ channels priced from filed carrier rates, so what you see is the market and not a guess dressed up as one.

More about us →

What the Freight Actually Looks Like

Origin gateways, terminals and warehouses your cargo passes through between the factory gate and your door.

Multimodal hub Rail, road and sea legs handed off at a single facility.

Project cargo Out-of-gauge pieces routed as a single-item move.

Air cargo build-up Unit load devices staged on the ramp before departure.

Cold-chain dock Chilled loading dock for temperature-sensitive freight.

Cross-border trucking Bonded trucking between the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong.

Rail freight yard China–Europe block train loading at an inland rail terminal.

Departure A loaded vessel sailing on the Pacific service.

Container scanning Non-intrusive inspection lane at the export gate.

Grow Beyond Shipping

Moving the box is the easy half. We also file the entry — heading, valuation, duty and tax, release — through licensed brokers standing in 160 markets.

🛃

Clearance in United States

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)

Requirements →

🛃

Clearance in Germany

German Customs (Zoll)

Requirements →

🛃

Clearance in United Kingdom

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)

Requirements →

🛃

Clearance in Nigeria

Nigeria Customs Service (NCS)

Requirements →

🛃

Clearance in Brazil

Receita Federal do Brasil

Requirements →

🛃

Clearance in Japan

Japan Customs (税関)

Requirements →

All 160 clearance markets → Brokers: partner with us

Sea, air or rail

The cheapest way to ship from China — and when it is not

Sea freight is the cheapest per kilo by a wide margin and is the right answer for most commercial volume. It stops being the right answer when the shipment is small, urgent, or worth far more than the freight.

Sea freight

Cheapest per kilo. Best above roughly 2 CBM, and the only sensible option above 15. Slow and predictable: 16–40 days depending on the lane. Full container below about USD 1 per kilo on most routes.

Air freight

Fastest. 4–9 days door to door. Typically five to ten times the per-kilo cost of sea, so it earns its place on small, urgent or high-value cargo — samples, replenishment, anything where a stockout costs more than the freight.

Rail to Europe

The middle option. 18–28 days to Germany, Poland and central Europe — roughly half the sea transit at a fraction of air cost. Useful when the calendar is tight but the budget is not unlimited.

The genuinely cheapest shipment is usually not the cheapest rate — it is the one that clears first time and does not sit accruing storage. We will tell you when air beats sea all-in on a small consignment rather than book the sea shipment anyway.

Beyond the standard box

Cargo that does not fit a standard container

Most of what moves out of China fits in a dry box and needs nothing clever. The rest is where a forwarder either knows what they are doing or discovers they do not, halfway through loading.

Out-of-gauge and project cargo

Flat rack and open-top equipment for machinery, moulds, prefabricated structures and anything that will not fit through a container door. Lashing plans and stowage approval handled before the booking is confirmed.

RoRo and static vehicles

Wheeled and tracked units on roll-on roll-off tonnage where a container is the wrong answer. Documentation for vehicles is its own discipline and we treat it that way.

Temperature-controlled

Reefer containers with set-point monitoring and power at both terminals. Cold chain fails at the handover points, so those are the ones we plan around.

Breakbulk and bulk

Pieces too large or too heavy to containerise, moved as breakbulk on conventional tonnage. Slower to arrange and worth arranging properly.

E-commerce

Amazon FBA and marketplace replenishment

Shipping into a fulfilment centre is a different job from shipping to a warehouse. The appointment, the labelling and the carton spec are as binding as the customs entry, and getting any of them wrong turns a delivery into a rejection.

Delivery booked against the FC appointment window, not dropped at the gate
Carton and pallet spec checked against the marketplace's rules before loading
FBA labels and shipment IDs applied at our origin warehouse where you need it
Duty-paid entry so the marketplace is never the importer of record by accident
Consolidation of several suppliers into one container before it ships

We move palletised replenishment volume, not single parcels — if you are shipping a handful of units, a courier will beat us on price and we will say so.

Cost structure

What sits inside an ocean freight quote

A rate that looks unbeatable is usually a rate with things left out of it. These are the lines that make up a landed cost — when you compare quotes, compare them line by line rather than on the headline number.

Origin charges. Haulage from the factory, export declaration, terminal handling and documentation at the load port.
Ocean freight. The carrier's rate for the box or the CBM. This is the part that moves week to week.
Surcharges. Bunker, peak season, congestion and low-sulphur adjustments, applied by lane and by carrier.
Destination terminal. Discharge, terminal handling, and CFS work if the cargo is consolidated.
Customs. Entry filing, duty and VAT. Ours are quoted alongside the freight rather than appearing later.
Delivery. The final leg, plus any waiting time or tail-lift the delivery address needs.

Where importers actually save money

Consolidate suppliers into one container instead of three LCL bookings
Book past the cut-off pressure — space bought in a hurry is bought badly
Fix the HS heading before the vessel sails, not at the border
Size cartons to the pallet and the pallet to the container door
Watch destination free time; demurrage is the most avoidable cost on the invoice
Move the peak-season volume early rather than paying the peak-season surcharge

Straight answers

What delays a shipment, and what we do about it

No forwarder controls a berth window or a customs inspection. What we can control is whether you hear about it early and whether the paperwork gave anyone a reason to look twice.

Cause	What it costs you	How we handle it
Port congestion	Days to weeks at the discharge terminal	Alternative gateways priced at booking, so there is a plan B before it is needed
Rolled cargo	A missed sailing, typically 7 days	Confirmed allocation on spot rates rather than a rate with no space behind it
Customs query	Storage and demurrage while it is resolved	Classification and valuation agreed before departure; entry filed by a licensed local broker
Document mismatch	Held entry, sometimes a fine	Invoice, packing list and bill of lading checked against each other before filing
Weather and schedule slip	Transit variance of several days	Realistic transit ranges quoted up front — we would rather under-promise
Damage in consolidation	Claims, and a customer who waited for nothing	Packing spec agreed for LCL freight; FCL recommended where cargo is fragile or dense

FAQ

Questions we get every week

How long does sea freight from China take?

Intra-Asia lanes run 4 to 16 days. The US west coast is roughly 16 to 30 days, northern Europe 30 to 40, east coast South America 32 to 42, and West Africa 25 to 38. LCL adds 3 to 7 days at each end for consolidation work. Those are port-to-port ranges — add the inland leg at both ends.

What is the minimum I can ship?

There is no hard floor, but under roughly 2 CBM the fixed costs of an ocean shipment stop making sense and air freight is often cheaper all-in. We will tell you when that is the case rather than book the sea shipment anyway.

Do you handle customs clearance at destination?

Yes, in every market we quote freight into. The entry is filed by a licensed broker in that country, and duty and tax are quoted with the freight rather than appearing afterwards. We also clear cargo other forwarders carried.

Can you collect from my supplier?

Yes. Give us the factory address and contact and we arrange collection, export declaration and loading. Multiple suppliers can be consolidated into one container at our origin warehouse.

What does DDP actually include?

Freight, destination clearance, duty and import tax, and delivery to your address. What it does not cover is anything caused at your end — waiting time, failed delivery, or storage after free time expires.

Is my cargo insured?

Carrier liability is limited by convention and is not insurance in any useful sense. Marine cargo insurance is quoted separately as a percentage of invoice value, and for anything fragile, high-value or dense we would recommend it.

What documents do you need from me?

A commercial invoice and packing list that match the goods exactly, plus any product certification the destination requires. Mismatches between the invoice and the transport document are the single most common reason an entry is queried.

How current are the rates on this site?

They come from the carrier rate sheets we book on and are refreshed when those reissue. Spot allocations move week to week, so the figure you see is a real rate rather than an estimate — reconfirm it against the sailing before you book.

Ocean Freight Notes

Trade notes, rate movements and the practical detail importers ask us about.

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Shipping by Industry

The lane sets the rate; the commodity decides whether the cargo is sellable on arrival. 572 guides covering packing, stowage, HS classification and the clearance step that most often holds a shipment.

Popular industry guides

Each one covers how the commodity prices, how it should leave the factory, how it should be stowed, and what stops it at the border.

All 60 industry guides →

Get in Touch

Ready to Ship from China?

Send the cargo detail and you get a landed-cost figure back on the trade term you actually contracted on, inside a working day.

Consolidating cargo from several suppliers at a China warehouse — Several factories, one bill of lading — consolidated at our own China warehouse.

✉️info@chinaoceanfreight.com

📞+86 18138342527

💬WeChat: lunjie1120

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Answer these and you get a real price, not a range. These are the exact figures a carrier needs before it will quote. Fill them in once and we can price your cargo the same day — leave them out and we have to come back and ask, which is what turns an hour into a week.

What are you shipping?*

Destination*

Weight*

Cartons*

ctn

Carton sizeoptional

× × cm

Total volumeopt

m³

Containeropt

How manyopt

ctr

Built-in battery?* Lithium cells are dangerous goods.

Yes No

Someone else's brand?* Logos you are not authorised to ship.

Yes No

Magnetic product?* Speakers, motors, magnets.

Yes No

Why these three decide everything

They determine whether your cargo can fly, and on which service. A declared battery changes the price; an undeclared one grounds the shipment at the airport and you pay storage while it sits. Unauthorised brands are seized at customs and the freight is lost with them. Magnetic goods need a field test — routine, but it has to be booked ahead. Telling us now costs a click; telling us later costs the shipment.

Sea or air?*

Sea freight Air freight

Tick both and we quote both.

When should it move?optional

Not before Not after

Your name

Email*

Phone / WhatsApp

Photographs of the goodsoptional

Add images PNG or JPG · up to 5 · 10 MB each

Your details are used to prepare this quotation and nothing else.

Container and Heavy Cargo Shipped from China by Sea

Best Shipping Options

Discharge Ports We Serve

Main Ocean Lanes

How We Move Heavy Cargo

Air Freight

Sea Freight

Rail Freight

What a China freight forwarder actually does for you

How long shipping from China takes

The lanes we run, and what they really take

Intra-Asia

West Coast South America

East Coast South America

North America

Europe and Mediterranean

Africa

Middle East

China–Europe rail

Full container or shared container?

Live Pricing Examples

An ocean desk in China, not a price-comparison site

What the Freight Actually Looks Like

Your Quote is FREE

Grow Beyond Shipping

Clearance in United States

Clearance in Germany

Clearance in United Kingdom

Clearance in Nigeria

Clearance in Brazil

Clearance in Japan

The cheapest way to ship from China — and when it is not

Sea freight

Air freight

Rail to Europe

Cargo that does not fit a standard container

Out-of-gauge and project cargo

RoRo and static vehicles

Temperature-controlled

Breakbulk and bulk

Amazon FBA and marketplace replenishment

What sits inside an ocean freight quote

Where importers actually save money

What delays a shipment, and what we do about it

Questions we get every week

Ocean Freight Notes

What a China Container Actually Costs in 2026 — Line by Line

LCL or FCL from China: Where the Break-Even Really Sits

Chargeable Weight: Why the Air Quote Went Up After Pickup

DDP from China: What “Duty Paid” Includes, and What It Quietly Doesn’t

Shipping by Industry

Popular industry guides

Ready to Ship from China?

Got it — your enquiry is in.

Container and Heavy Cargo
Shipped from China by Sea