Europe is the lane with the most genuine choice. Ocean, rail and air all work, they differ by roughly ten times in cost and six times in transit, and most importers only ever price two of the three.
Ocean — the default, and usually correct
Around 30 to 40 days port to port to North Europe, longer to the Mediterranean via the Suez routing. Cheapest per kilo by a wide margin and the only sensible option above about 10 CBM unless the deadline forbids it.
The main ports do not behave identically. Rotterdam and Antwerp have the deepest services and the most sailings. Felixstowe is the UK’s main box port and its inland trucking is expensive relative to the ocean leg. Valencia and Genoa serve southern Europe with fewer direct calls and more transhipment, which shows up as variance rather than as a longer headline transit.
Current rates: Shanghai to Rotterdam, Ningbo to Felixstowe, Ningbo to Le Havre, Shanghai to Genoa, Ningbo to Valencia, Ningbo to Gdansk.
Rail — the option that gets skipped
18 to 28 days, at a cost between ocean and air and much nearer ocean. On paper it is the obvious middle. In practice most importers never quote it, either because they do not know it exists at commercial scale or because they assume it is only for full containers.
Where it genuinely wins is inland Europe. A block train to Duisburg or Malaszewicze is already deep inside the continent, so for a consignee in Poland, Czechia, Austria or southern Germany you save both time and the long truck run from a North Sea port. For a consignee in Rotterdam itself, rail makes much less sense.
The trade-off is that a rail move crosses several customs territories in transit, so documentation errors surface mid-corridor rather than at the destination, and they are slower to fix there. See China to Germany rail, express and the Germany overview.
Air — for deadlines, not for cargo
5 to 10 days including handling at both ends. Correct for genuinely urgent shipments, for high-value-per-kilo goods, and for the first production run when getting to market matters more than margin. Wrong for anything bulky, because volumetric weight will decide the bill and it will not be kind.
How to decide in one pass
- Fix the deadline first. Under two weeks, air. Under five, rail or air. Over six, ocean is almost always right.
- Then check density. Under about 167 kg/m³, air is disproportionately expensive.
- Then look at where the consignee is. Deep inland pushes toward rail; near a major port pushes toward ocean.
- Then price two of them properly rather than assuming.
Country overviews with all available modes: Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Poland, France, United Kingdom.
