Pricing
What your shipping cost depends on
A rate is built from five components: cargo density, product category, shipping mode, season and route. The first one surprises clients most often — two shipments of identical weight can differ several times over in price, and the reason is not a markup but how much space they occupy. Below is the mechanism we use, so that you can check any quote, ours or anyone else's.
Why we do not publish a price list
Freight tariffs change constantly — this is a property of the market, not a feature of our company. A sea freight rate can shift within a week because of capacity on the lane, fuel costs, seasonality or the situation along the route. A price list posted on a website becomes either outdated or deliberately padded within a month.
So we work differently: we calculate the rate for the specific shipment and fix it before dispatch. A preliminary quote is ready in 30 minutes. After arrival the rate is not recalculated — even if the market has moved up in the meantime.
By default the rate is calculated "from our warehouse in China to our warehouse in Ukraine". Customs clearance is not included and is quoted separately for the specific shipment — or absorbed into the total under DDP terms.
Cargo density: the main factor
A carrier sells space, not weight. That is why every calculation involves two figures — actual weight and volumetric weight — and the larger of the two is charged.
Volumetric weight is the notional weight of a shipment's volume under the carrier's formula. Sea freight is usually calculated per cubic metre, air freight uses a divisor of 6000, which makes one cubic metre roughly equal to 167 kilograms.
A simple illustration. A tonne of car parts takes up about one cubic metre — dense cargo, you pay by weight. A tonne of plastic containers takes up some eight cubic metres — light, bulky cargo, and you pay for volume rather than weight. The same 1,000 kilograms, and a rate that differs several times over.
Hence the practical conclusion: before a quote it helps to know not only the weight but also the carton dimensions and how many there are. Without that, any figure quoted will be approximate.
Product category
The rate depends not only on what the goods weigh and how much space they take, but also on what the goods are.
- Documents and permits. Products that require certification or sanitary and phytosanitary documents involve more work at the paperwork stage. This covers supplements, food products, cosmetics, children's goods and part of the electronics range.
- Carriage conditions. Batteries, power banks and portable power stations are cargo that not every carrier accepts and not on every sailing, because separate transport rules apply to them.
- Customs payments. Duty and VAT are calculated by HS code and are not part of the logistics rate unless you ship under DDP terms. Duty rates for different categories differ several times over.
Shipping mode
| Mode | Transit time | When it makes sense |
|---|---|---|
| Sea, groupage | 70 days | The lowest cost per kilogram. Suits regular consignments planned in advance |
| Sea, full container | 70 days | When you fill a container it beats groupage, as there is no consolidation charge |
| Rail | 35–45 days | Twice as fast as sea and substantially cheaper than air. A compromise when timing matters but is not critical |
| Air | from 10 days | Justified for expensive, light or urgent goods. For bulky low-value cargo — almost never |
| Road | 25–30 days | A dedicated truck or groupage from one pallet: 22–25 days to Poland, then 3–5 days to Kyiv |
A rule that holds almost always: the more expensive the goods per kilogram, the smaller the share of freight in their landed cost — and the more sense there is in shipping fast.
Season and route
Ahead of Chinese New Year rates rise and transit times stretch: factories close for two or three weeks, and the whole market tries to ship out before that. The same happens, less sharply, ahead of the autumn peak sales season.
The route matters too. Cargo can go to the ports of Odesa and Chornomorsk or through EU ports — Gdańsk and Constanța — and that means a different cost, a different transit time and a different set of documents. The second option requires a T1 transit declaration. The rail route runs through the Małaszewicze border crossing in Poland.
What we fix and what we do not
Fixed before dispatch: the logistics rate. It is not recalculated after arrival — neither because the market moved nor because "the weight turned out to be higher". If we made a mistake in the quote, that is our mistake, not your invoice.
Not fixed: duty and VAT, unless the shipment is on DDP terms. These are state payments, calculated from the customs value by product code, and no carrier can fix them in advance.
What legitimately changes the rate: actual dimensions or weight that differ from those you stated when requesting the quote. That is why we photograph and measure the consignment at our warehouse in China — so that any discrepancy is visible to you before dispatch, not in an invoice on arrival.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Quote · free of charge
We will calculate your rate
Describe the cargo — the goods, number of packages, dimensions and weight — and we will calculate a rate for it and fix it before dispatch.