Incoterms decide who pays for what between the factory gate and your warehouse, and on a packaging order the difference between two three-letter codes is often larger than the discount you negotiated on the boxes. The terms come from the International Chamber of Commerce, and the current edition is Incoterms 2020. A quote that does not state the term, or states it without the edition and the named port, is not finished.<\/p>\n
EXW, ex works, puts the smallest obligation on the supplier: the price covers boxes packed and available at the factory, and everything after that – loading, trucking, export clearance, freight, insurance, import – is yours. Buyers with their own forwarder in China often prefer it, because it keeps the domestic leg under their control. The trade-off is that the factory quote looks cheaper than a comparable FOB quote while your true landed cost is higher.<\/p>\n
FOB, free on board, is the default for most China packaging orders. The factory delivers the goods cleared through export customs onto the vessel at the named port, and the risk transfers at the ship’s rail. You book the ocean freight, either directly or through a forwarder you appoint. For a buyer building a repeat relationship, FOB keeps the freight decision and the freight invoice visible instead of buried in the box price.<\/p>\n
CIF looks convenient because the factory arranges freight and insurance to your port. The catch sits in the wording: cost, insurance and freight run to the destination port, but the risk still transfers when the goods are loaded in China. If a container is damaged in the Pacific, the claim runs through a policy the factory bought, on terms you have not read. For anything fragile or high-value, that gap matters.<\/p>\n
DAP and DDP push responsibility all the way to your door. DDP, delivered duty paid, means the seller handles import clearance and duties in your country – which for a Chinese exporter usually requires a tax registration or an agent there, and the price will reflect it. DAP stops at the border of your premises with duties on you. Both terms are worth pricing for comparison, but they hide the freight inside the unit price, which makes quotes harder to compare between suppliers.<\/p>\n
The hidden costs live in the local charges, whatever the term. Terminal handling, documentation, customs declaration fees and container cleaning are billed separately, and on CIF terms they arrive as invoices from a forwarder you did not choose. Ask any supplier for the itemised local charge list at the loading port before comparing quotes – two FOB quotes from the same port should show the same list, which makes the comparison honest.<\/p>\n
Insurance deserves its own line regardless of term. The standard marine cargo policy covers a defined set of risks, and the sum insured is usually the invoice value plus a margin. Buyers shipping printed packaging through humid routes or multiple transhipments should confirm the coverage matches the route rather than assuming the factory policy is broad. The transit risks themselves are described in\u00a0the transit testing overview<\/a>.<\/p>\n Named place precision matters more than most buyers expect. “FOB Shanghai” and “FOB Ningbo” are different obligations with different trucking costs from a Wuhan plant, and a quote that says only “FOB China” leaves the port to be negotiated later, usually at the buyer’s expense. State the port, the term and the edition in the purchase order, and keep the same combination across orders so freight comparisons stay valid.<\/p>\n Which term suits a first order? For most buyers, FOB with a forwarder they appoint gives the cleanest picture: the factory handles what it is good at, the freight market is visible, and the local charges appear on one invoice rather than three. EXW works once the forwarder relationship is established; CIF works for buyers who genuinely prefer one price and accept the claims structure; DDP works for small trial shipments where the simplicity is worth the margin.<\/p>\n VAT and duty do not disappear under any term except DDP. Under FOB or CIF, import duty, VAT and brokerage in your country are yours, and they are calculated on the customs value, which is not the same as the box price on the quote. How tariffs and duty codes change the landed cost of paper packaging is set out in\u00a0the export compliance overview<\/a>\u00a0and worth reading before the first reorder.<\/p>\n One practical habit keeps incoterms from causing disputes: write the term, the port and the edition into the purchase order, and mirror them in the booking confirmation from the forwarder. When the three documents agree, most of the classic arguments – who pays the container cleaning, who ordered the truck, whose insurance responds – never start. Where a dispute does start, the paperwork path is the same as any quality claim, covered in\u00a0the export order management guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you are comparing packaging quotes and the incoterms differ between suppliers, send them to us as they are. Chengtop quotes\u00a0cajas plegables<\/a>,\u00a0cajas de cart\u00f3n ondulado<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0rigid boxes<\/a>\u00a0from our Wuhan plant on FOB, CIF or EXW with the local charge list attached, so the comparison stays on the boxes rather than the freight. The\u00a0quote request page<\/a>\u00a0takes the details directly.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Incoterms decide who pays for what between the factory gate and your warehouse, and on a packaging order the difference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry-updates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chengtop1.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chengtop1.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chengtop1.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chengtop1.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chengtop1.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5462"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.chengtop1.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5464,"href":"https:\/\/www.chengtop1.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5462\/revisions\/5464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chengtop1.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chengtop1.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chengtop1.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}