Shipping clothing from Bangladesh

It depends on who you already work with. If you have a freight forwarder, or will appoint one, FOB Chattogram usually gives you the most control and the clearest costs: we deliver the goods and documents, your forwarder carries them and clears them into your country, and you can compare freight quotes yourself. CIF suits buyers who want the ocean freight organised for them but have a customs broker at home; remember that the risk is still yours from loading and the insurance is only the minimum cover. DDP is the simplest for a first order or a small brand without a forwarder, because the price arrives at your door. It is also the term where hidden assumptions about duty and VAT matter most, so ask for the duty rate and the tariff code used in the quote, and check both before you accept it.

By sea, SEKO Logistics publishes typical transit times of about 22 to 30 days to the UK and Europe and 18 to 35 days to the United States, depending on routing and transshipment. Those are sailing times, not the whole journey. Add trucking from the factory to Chattogram, time at the port before the feeder vessel sails, the connection at Colombo, Singapore or Malaysia, and clearance and delivery at your end. For planning, count from the date the goods are ready, not the date they are shipped, and leave a margin for a missed connection at the hub, which is the most common cause of a late arrival. Air freight takes about two to five days in transit and is worth considering for a launch with a fixed date. We give you the booking details as soon as they exist, so your team can track the shipment.

No. If your goods will not fill a container, they can travel as less-than-container load (LCL), sharing a container with other cargo. You pay by the cubic metre rather than for the whole box, which makes sea freight workable for a few hundred cartons or fewer. The trade-off is time and handling: LCL cargo is consolidated at the origin and split again at destination, which adds days and some risk of damage, so cartons need to be strong and well marked. For very small or urgent lots, air freight or a courier can be cheaper than it sounds once you compare the total, because clothing is light and a well-packed carton keeps the chargeable weight down. Send us your carton count and dimensions and we will show you the options side by side before the goods are ready.

Before the goods leave, you or your forwarder receive drafts of the commercial invoice and packing list to check against your purchase order, because a wrong quantity or tariff code is far cheaper to fix on paper than at your border. After loading, the set is completed with the bill of lading or air waybill and the proof of origin your market requires, which for the EU is a statement on origin under the REX system. Under FOB and CIF the documents go to you or your bank as your payment terms require; under DDP they are used by the importing agent to clear the goods for you. Keep them: customs authorities can ask to see origin evidence after the goods have been released, and preferential duty that cannot be supported can be claimed back from the importer.

Garments are cleared for export by filing a bill of export with Bangladesh Customs through the ASYCUDA World system before loading, and we handle it under all three terms we quote: FOB, CIF and DDP. Alongside it, the EXP form, the Bangladesh Bank export declaration, is certified by the exporter’s bank. Both rest on the commercial invoice, which shows the exporter’s registration number and the HS code of each style, and on a carton-by-carton packing list with weights and dimensions. Customs checks the documents and can physically verify the consignment before it approves loading. The goods must also pass final inspection before they are released for loading, and you can ask for loading to be checked at the container, with photographs and the seal number recorded. Import clearance is a separate step: under FOB and CIF it is yours or your customs broker’s, while under DDP we arrange it, including the duty and import taxes in your country.

A 20-foot container holds about 225 cartons of clothing measuring 60 × 40 × 40 cm, a 40-foot container about 500 and a 40-foot high cube about 600, when the cartons are stacked in one orientation. The counts come from Maersk’s internal dimensions: a 20-foot box is 5.896 m long, 2.350 m wide and 2.393 m high, which takes 9 cartons along its length, 5 across and 5 high. Dividing volume by volume overstates the load: the 20-foot container’s 33.2 cubic metres divided by the carton’s 0.096 gives 345, but cartons never fill the full volume. Run the same sum with your own carton size, then multiply by the pieces per carton on your packing list to get garments per container. Below a full 20-foot load, compare a shared-container (LCL) quote, charged by the cubic metre, and ask your forwarder for a load plan before you book.

The ex-factory date is the day finished goods leave the factory, ETD is the estimated time of departure of the vessel or aircraft from Bangladesh, and ETA is its estimated time of arrival at the destination port or airport, not at your warehouse. Between ex-factory and ETD the goods travel roughly 240 km by road from the factory districts around Dhaka to Chattogram, clear export customs and wait for a feeder vessel. Between ETD and ETA a sea shipment changes ships at a hub such as Colombo or Singapore, and a missed connection there is the most common cause of a late arrival. After the ETA come import clearance and delivery. A lead time quoted ex-factory or to FOB therefore excludes transit, clearance and delivery. Ask which of the three dates your order confirmation commits to, and plan your launch from the delivery date, not the ETA.

Whether clothing samples sent from Bangladesh pay import duty depends on the destination: the United States normally charges it, Great Britain does not on parcels worth £135 or less, and the EU has a relief for samples. The US de minimis exemption of US$800 has been suspended since August 2025; HTS 9811.00.60 admits free only samples valued at not over US$1 each, or marked or mutilated so they cannot be sold. GOV.UK listed the £135 threshold for non-excise goods on 1 October 2026, with VAT handled separately; above it, HMRC relieves UK businesses of duty and VAT on samples torn, perforated, slashed or marked as a commercial sample. In the EU, Article 86 of Regulation (EC) No 1186/2009 admits samples of negligible value free of import duty when they can be used only to solicit orders. A fit sample you need to wear may not qualify, so give us its true commercial value to declare.

Yes, in practice a clothing shipment from Bangladesh needs cargo insurance: a carrier pays only where it is liable and only up to fixed limits, and the cover built into shipping terms is thin. Where the Hague-Visby Rules apply, a sea carrier’s liability is limited to 666.67 special drawing rights (SDR) per package or 2 SDR per kilogram, whichever is higher, and a container counts as the number of packages listed on the bill of lading. By air, the Montreal Convention limit for cargo has been 26 SDR per kilogram since 28 December 2024. Under FOB the goods are at your risk once on board, with no insurance included. Under CIF the seller buys minimum cover, Institute Cargo Clauses (C), which covers major casualties, not theft or water damage. Ask for all-risks cover, Institute Cargo Clauses (A), and check that the bill of lading states the carton count.

FOB, free on board, is an Incoterms 2020 rule: the seller delivers, and the risk of loss or damage passes to the buyer, once the goods are loaded on board the vessel at the named port of shipment. The ICC says it is for sea and inland waterway transport only, so it is written with a port: FOB Chattogram. On our FOB Chattogram quotes, production, trucking to the port, export clearance and loading are ours; the ocean freight, insurance, import clearance, duty and delivery are yours. FOB shipping point is not the Incoterm but a term of US sales law. Under section 2-319 of the Uniform Commercial Code, the seller must ship the goods at the named place and bear the expense and risk of putting them into the possession of the carrier; under FOB destination, the seller carries the goods to the named place at its own expense and risk. Incoterms FOB moves the risk when the goods are on board, FOB shipping point when the carrier takes them, so on an import contract name the rule, the port and the version, as the US International Trade Administration advises: FOB Chattogram, Incoterms 2020. For containers, the ICC points to FCA instead.

They are charges for keeping a carrier’s container, or the terminal’s space, beyond the free time set in your contract or the carrier’s tariff. The US Federal Maritime Commission defines them together as charges for the use of terminal space or shipping containers, other than freight. In practice demurrage runs while a full container waits at the terminal after discharge, and detention while you keep the container outside the terminal, at your warehouse for example, before returning it empty. Under FOB and CIF they normally fall to you at destination, because collection and import clearance are yours. They build up when the documents or the customs entry are not ready on arrival, so the protection is paperwork: get the draft invoice and packing list to your broker before departure and book collection before the ETA. In the United States, a carrier or terminal must invoice within 30 days of the date the charge was last incurred, or you need not pay it; must give you at least 30 days to ask for a reduction, refund or waiver; and must show the bill of lading and container numbers on the invoice; an invoice missing the information the rule requires need not be paid.

The shipper. Since 1 July 2016 the SOLAS convention, chapter VI, regulation 2, has made a verified gross mass a condition for loading a packed container onto a ship, and has made the shipper responsible for obtaining it and stating it in the shipping document. Two methods are allowed: weighing the packed container, or weighing every package and cargo item, pallets, dunnage and securing material included, and adding the container’s tare mass, by a certified method approved by the authorities of the country where the container was packed. A container that arrives without a VGM is not loaded unless the master or the terminal obtains the weight on the shipper’s behalf, on terms the commercial parties agree, including who pays. For a clothing order the gross weights come from the packing list, so carton weights should be weighed, not estimated: a guessed weight is wrong twice, on the packing list and on the VGM. Under FOB your forwarder books the container and will ask for the VGM before its cut-off; under CIF and DDP the forwarder that books the freight needs it before the same cut-off.