Buying direct from origin is genuinely cheaper than buying through a UK distributor. It is also a different job. If you have not done it before, the gap between the quoted price and the landed cost is where the education happens, and it is usually expensive. This is an overview of the moving parts so you can decide whether you want to own them or hand them to someone else.
Incoterms decide who owns which problem
The three that matter in this trade:
- FOB (Free On Board). The seller gets the goods onto the vessel at origin. Everything after that — freight, insurance, arrival charges, clearance, duty, inland delivery — is yours. The headline number looks fantastic and it is roughly half the story.
- CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight). The seller covers sea freight and insurance to the destination port. You still handle arrival charges, customs clearance, duty and inland delivery.
- DDP (Delivered Duty Paid). The seller delivers to your address with everything paid. The number you accept is the number you pay.
There is no universally correct choice. If you have an import function, a customs broker and a warehouse, FOB or CIF will be cheaper. If you do not, DDP is not a premium for laziness — it is a transfer of genuine operational risk to somebody who does this every week.
The documentation set
A compliant food consignment travels with paperwork, and a missing document at the border costs days rather than pounds. Expect to see:
- Commercial invoice and packing list
- Bill of lading or air waybill
- Certificate of origin
- Phytosanitary certificate, where the commodity requires one
- Certificate of Analysis for the lot, including aflatoxin results on nuts and dried fruit
- An official certificate and analytical report from origin, where the commodity and origin combination is subject to increased official controls
Import controls and pre-notification
Food and feed of non-animal origin entering Great Britain is subject to a risk-based control regime. Certain commodity-and-origin combinations attract increased frequencies of documentary, identity and physical checks, and consignments in those categories generally require pre-notification through the relevant government system before arrival.
The lists and frequencies are amended periodically, so the practical advice is not to memorise them but to confirm the current position for your specific commodity and origin before you commit to a shipment. Getting this wrong does not usually mean a fine; it means a container sitting at a port while somebody works out what is missing.
Duty and VAT
Duty is assessed on the commodity code, and the codes in this category are more granular than people expect — shelled and unshelled, sweetened and unsweetened, prepared and unprepared are all different lines with potentially different rates. Preferential rates may apply depending on origin and the documentation supporting it.
Import VAT is charged on the landed value and, if you are VAT registered, is recoverable in the normal way — but it is a cash-flow event at the point of import, which catches out businesses budgeting only for duty. Postponed VAT accounting exists precisely to soften this and is worth understanding before your first container rather than after it.
Classify the goods properly at the quotation stage. A commodity code error discovered later is a correction, an adjustment and occasionally a penalty.
Lead times, honestly
Sea freight from western India to a UK port is typically in the region of three to five weeks door to port, before clearance and inland delivery. Add the time to produce, test and consolidate the goods at origin, and a realistic first-order timeline from purchase order to your floor is measured in weeks rather than days.
Two things reliably go wrong. Containers get rolled — bumped to a later vessel — particularly around peak season, and border checks take as long as they take. Neither is predictable and both are survivable if you have planned for them. The failure mode is committing a production schedule to a delivery date that assumed everything would go right.
Where the money actually goes
If you are comparing an FOB quotation against a delivered price, the honest comparison includes: sea freight, insurance, destination terminal handling, customs clearance, duty, import VAT as a cash-flow cost, inland haulage, any demurrage if the container is held, the cost of testing on arrival if you are testing on arrival, and the cost of your own time managing all of it. Add those before you conclude the direct route is dramatically cheaper. Sometimes it still is, and then you should take it.
The short version
If importing is a capability you want to build, build it — buy CIF, get a good customs broker, and learn the process on a small consignment rather than a full container. If it is not, buy delivered duty paid and spend your attention on selling the product.
Aarleez Ltd is the importer of record on delivered terms. We buy at source in India, test before shipment, clear the goods and quote delivered duty paid in sterling to your address, so the price you accept is the price you pay. Ex-warehouse and container-direct terms are available if you would rather run your own leg.