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.
When splitting is the right call anyway
The 900.00 is a real cost and it is not always the deciding one.
Cash flow. Three entries mean three smaller duty and VAT payments spread across months rather than one large one at the start. For a business financing its own stock, that can be worth more than 900.00.
Warehouse capacity. Stock you cannot store costs money in a different column, and demurrage on a container you cannot unload is expensive fast.
Risk. One consignment that goes missing, is damaged, or is held for inspection takes the whole order with it. Three are three chances of a delay, but a single incident only reaches a third of the stock.
Time to market. The first third arriving weeks earlier has a value that no landed-cost calculation captures.
The version that is almost always wrong
Splitting by accident. Cargo that misses a sailing and goes in two parts, or a supplier who ships what is ready and follows up with the rest, incurs the whole 900.00 and buys none of the benefits above.
If a shipment is going to be split, decide it — and if it is not, say so in the purchase order.
The number to work out first
Your own fixed cost per customs entry: the broker's fee, the documentation, any port or handling minimum, and the hours somebody in your business spends on each clearance. Most importers have never added it up, and it is the input this whole decision turns on. Once you know it, split-or-consolidate stops being a judgement call and becomes a subtraction: extra entries times that figure, against what the split buys you in cash flow, space or speed.
The same arithmetic runs the other way. Two suppliers in the same region shipping separately pay the fixed cost twice; consolidating them into one entry saves 300.00 of entry cost here and usually buys better freight density as well — the cheapest saving available to anybody importing from more than one factory.
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.