Three shipments instead of one, and the same goods cost 900 more
There are good reasons to split a consignment. Spreading cash flow, keeping a warehouse from flooding, staying under a threshold, getting half the order moving while the rest is still in production. What people underestimate is the price, because the costs that multiply are the ones nobody quotes per unit.
1,200 units, shipped once, against the same 1,200 units shipped in 3 consignments.
| One consignment | 3 consignments | |
|---|---|---|
| Goods | 18,000.00 | 18,000.00 |
| Duty | 1,170.00 | 1,170.00 |
| Insurance | 180.00 | 180.00 |
| Freight | 2,400.00 | 2,700.00 |
| Clearance fees | 300.00 | 900.00 |
| Total landed cost | 22,050.00 | 22,950.00 |
| Per unit | 18.38 | 19.13 |
Goods, duty and insurance do not move — they scale with value, and the value is the same however many boxes it arrives in. The 900.00 of damage is entirely in two lines: 600.00 of extra clearance fees and 300.00 of freight that a smaller load does not get at the full-consignment rate.
The distinction that matters
Import costs divide into two kinds, and the split only hurts one of them:
- Costs that scale with value — duty, VAT, insurance, usually the goods themselves. These are indifferent to how you slice the shipment, because the percentage is applied to the same total either way.
- Costs charged per entry — customs brokerage, entry filing, terminal handling, documentation, and the fixed component of freight. These get multiplied by the number of consignments, and only by that.
Before you split, add up the second kind and multiply. That figure, divided by the units, is what the split costs you per unit: here 0.75.
On splitting to stay under a threshold
Many countries set a value below which duty, or duty and import tax, is not collected. Splitting a consignment to slip under one looks like free money and usually is not, for two reasons.
The first is the arithmetic above: the per-entry costs you take on can easily exceed the duty you avoid, and the calculator will show you which way that falls in about a minute.
The second is that customs authorities are familiar with the idea. Splitting a single order across consignments specifically to stay under a threshold is treated as one consignment in many jurisdictions, and the rules that say so are not obscure. The honest uses of a split are operational. Treating it as a tax strategy is a conversation to have with a broker, not with a calculator.
Work it for your own shipment
The figures above come from the same code the calculators run, so typing these inputs in reproduces them exactly. Your own numbers are the point though — add up your own per-entry costs in the landed cost calculator, and compare that against the duty a split would avoid.
These are estimates, not assessments. Duty rates, the taxable base, and the valuation rules that decide them are set by national law and by how your goods are classified. A customs broker or your national customs authority gives you the binding answer; this site gives you the arithmetic so you know roughly what is coming and which question to ask.