Shipping clothing from Bangladesh

Where your goods leave Bangladesh

Almost everything made for export leaves by one of two gates. Chattogram, on the Bay of Bengal, handles more than 90 per cent of Bangladesh’s maritime trade. Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka handles air freight. Most garment factories sit around Dhaka, Gazipur and Narayanganj, so a sea shipment starts with a truck journey of roughly 240 km to the port, which is part of what an FOB price pays for.

The detail that matters for your planning: Chattogram is a river port with a limited draught, so the large ocean vessels that sail to Europe and North America do not call there. Containers go out on feeder ships to a regional hub, Colombo in Sri Lanka, Singapore, or Tanjung Pelepas or Port Klang in Malaysia, and are moved onto the mainline vessel there. Every sea shipment from Bangladesh is therefore transshipped, and the connection at the hub is where most delays happen.

Choosing a shipping term

We quote FOB, CIF and DDP. The term decides three things: who pays for each leg, who books it, and at which point the goods become your risk. The table below sets them out; the difference between who pays and who carries the risk is the part buyers most often miss.

One point from the rules themselves. The International Chamber of Commerce, which publishes Incoterms, recommends FCA rather than FOB for containerised goods, because a container is handed over at the terminal, days before it is lifted on board. FOB remains the term most of the garment trade quotes, so what matters in practice is agreeing in writing where and when the container is handed to your forwarder, and who is responsible between gate-in and loading.

CIF and DDP: read the small print

Under CIF the seller pays the freight, but the goods are at your risk from the moment they are on board at Chattogram. The insurance CIF requires is also only the minimum cover, Institute Cargo Clauses (C), which covers major casualties rather than theft, water damage or rough handling. If the goods matter to you, insure them on wider terms yourself, or ask for all-risks cover to be quoted.

DDP is the simplest term to buy and the hardest to do well. The seller becomes responsible for clearing the goods into your country and paying the duty and import taxes there, so the price includes an estimate of both. Two consequences are worth knowing before you choose it. If you are VAT-registered in the UK or EU, import VAT paid by someone else as importer is normally not yours to reclaim. And your own customs classification and origin evidence still have to be right, because an error found later is corrected against the import, not the invoice.

Sea, air or courier

Sea freight is the default for production: it is by far the cheapest per garment, and clothing is light for its volume, so you pay for space rather than weight. When your order will not fill a container, it can travel as less-than-container load (LCL), sharing a box with other cargo and paying by the cubic metre, at the cost of extra handling at both ends.

Air freight is priced on chargeable weight: the greater of the actual weight and the volumetric weight, which the airline industry calculates as length × width × height in centimetres divided by 6,000. Express couriers such as DHL divide by 5,000, which makes the same bulky carton more expensive. Garments pack light and bulky, so volumetric weight is usually what you pay for, and a well-packed carton saves real money.

The export documents

Every shipment leaves with a set of documents, prepared on our side and checked against your order before the goods move. Some are for Bangladesh’s own controls; others are what your customs broker needs to clear the goods and claim any preferential duty rate.

• Commercial invoice, showing the exporter’s registration number and the HS code of each style
• Packing list, carton by carton, with weights and dimensions
• EXP form: the Bangladesh Bank export declaration, certified by the exporter’s bank
• Bill of export, filed with Bangladesh Customs through the ASYCUDA World system
• Bill of lading for sea, or air waybill for air
• Proof of origin, in the form your market requires for preferential duty
• Insurance certificate, where the term includes insurance

Proof of origin decides your duty

For the UK and the EU, clothing from Bangladesh can enter duty-free, but only if the goods meet the origin rules and the shipment carries the right origin statement. For the EU that is a statement on origin made under the Registered Exporter (REX) system, written on the commercial documents rather than a separate certificate. Get it wrong and the goods pay the full duty rate, and the error is often found after the goods have landed.

The rules, rates and documents each market expects are set out for UK brands, US brands and EU brands. For the US there is no duty preference for Bangladesh, so origin matters for marking and for the tariff rate rather than for a zero rate. To compare the total cost of a style, try the landed cost calculator.

Samples and small parcels to the US

Until August 2025, parcels worth under US$800 could enter the United States free of duty under the de minimis rule, which is how many brands received samples without paperwork. That treatment has been suspended, so samples and small courier shipments to the US now attract duty and need proper customs data. Budget for it, and give us the commercial value to declare: under-declaring a sample to save duty is not worth the delay or the penalty.

What we do on every shipment

Shipping problems usually start at the factory gate, not at sea. So the last things we check are the ones that cause most claims: that the right cartons are in the container, in the right quantity, marked the way your warehouse expects.

• Final inspection passed before the goods are released for loading
• Carton marks, labels and barcodes checked against your specification
• Loading supervised at the container, with photographs and the seal number recorded
• Documents drafted and sent to you or your forwarder for checking before departure
• Under FOB, the goods and documents handed to your nominated forwarder
• Under CIF and DDP, freight booked through a forwarder and quoted with the order

Loading supervision is the last of the checks described on our quality control page.