American products "disabled for Europe"

Dangerous goods shipments are allowed but only really possible for big companies. You have to be certified, pay a fee & be trained how to pack the super dangerous items. So a larger website outside the UK could ship a Dangerous Goods pallet to Heathrow & have the individual bottles sent legally via a UK agent by post.

I am sure that a lot of freight is not properly declared because of these regs. RM spot scan parcels & do destroy items.
The new system was agreed with Royal Mail the CAA & MCA. So now all aftershaves, deodorants etc are banned from airmail & standard air & sea freight. Surface mail no longer exists, everything goes by air.

There should be a better system for small shipments; limited quantities were brought in because smaller shipments were allowed & safe, however the CAA decided not to allow this any more. I am told this is only because of a fire involving lithium batteries, after this all rules were reviewed. This is not the case in every EU country though, Spain seems to be unaffected.
 
Bechet said:
It arrives in UK in big tanks fitted within a 20TEU container frame and marked 'Dangerous', loaded onto container lorries, moved to bottling plant, onto warehouse, into Waitrose lorries ...

Or it might be loaded into containers already bottled and the container marked 'Dangerous'.

If you want really dangerous - how does petrol get into the station pumps and how does butane get into domestic cylinders? Jolly Jack brings it by sea!

And even more dangerous, the undeclared stuff put into containers - that leaks and gives off fumes and burns the steel of the decks.
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That will be the Pinaud Clubman :D
 
This is really nothing to do with HMRC or an ability to certify shipments or how big you are. If I was a small time A/S manufacturer and wanted to sell it in Europe - I do a deal with a distributor and then engage a forwarding company. The forwarding company looks after all the paperwork and customs declarations including notification of whatever is being carried. The European distributor then has to deal with anything payable on receipt (duty/taxes) which will be factored into the prices he sells to retailers.
 
Paying someone to come to your premises, pack all the items in boxes & then on a pallet is somewhat expensive. A whole pallet is around 2,000 bottles so probably worth pursuing. For smaller, wholesale shipments US retailers can pay around £300 extra for dangerous goods freight, & that's a bulk rate grouped on a pallet with other shipments, so not express either. This is also from manufactures with their own certified staff & in house packing. Sea freight is even more expensive for small shipments because of devanning & other port fees.

So there is no possible way of legally shipping small parcels by airmail out of the UK. I have found that even a £8-£18 shipping cost puts off many customers in Europe & I have only found one courier who accepts small shipments by road. So I do not not agree that's easy or even possible for most artisan or small scale makers to legally offer their items in the EU. Plus with US made items you have the cost of formula certification & that is around £300-£500 a product.
 
moodymick said:
It's actually for The Veg. They have to handle it carefully, any spillage would result in all women within 100 yards melting in a miasma of sexual lust. That's why I can only wear it at work on days when the windows are open.
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That's what they tell you anyway, isn't it Mick. Anyway I don't care how bad the Veg smells it's not as bad as asofoetida. [emoji38]
 
Pity an artisan over here cant produce a smell alike, the ones i am referring to is Stirling AS, i would love to try those, after all its only water, alcohol and fragrance oil, and probably a bit of oil for moisturising?
 
Paul, I think we are cross purposes - my post failed to say that I was a USA manufacturer - and I was specifically talking of sea freight. So, if I can get a distributor in Europe or UK to order 2000 bottles, it's not too much of a stretch to get the product packed onto a pallet and picked up by a freight forwarder. I don't know what the cost for one pallet would be - but to put it in perspective, if you are big enough a 40ft container can be shipped from the US for less than $2,000 and that holds nearly 70 cubic metres - so my pallet would be about 2 cubic metres maybe.

So, the problem that I see is not so much the cost of doing all this as getting someone who is prepared to commit to 2000 bottles.
 
Uncle Bertie said:
That's what they tell you anyway, isn't it Mick. Anyway I don't care how bad the Veg smells it's not as bad as asofoetida. [emoji38]
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Maybe.... but I thought the injunction was a bit harsh:oops:

Actually I had to look up asofoetida as I'd never heard of it. I like how it's also known as both food of the gods and Devil's dung. Must be a local variant of MWF.
 
Yes but with packing as per Dangerous goods regs one pallet can cost £600-£800 plus airfreight. This is what DG agents charge. The main reason for the high cost is that hardly any forwarders want to touch flammable liquids.
Other than department stores I can't see anyone else being able to pursue importing dangerous goods. I think this is why Kramperts/SS is starting production again the EU. EU Road freight in most cases has a further exemption known as ADR. What is really restrictive is the way that Limited Quantities regs have been overruled for safety /security concerns. It should be possible to ship drums of Floid without Dangerous Goods docs, the LQ for most aftershave is a 800L. So destroying Mick's one or seven bottles of lotion is not reasonable. There should be a simple form to declare aftershaves & I am hoping that Royal Mail will come up with something in the future.
 
I think it's just too much effort and expense on the part of the US manufacturers of the stuff a lot of us want and any interested sellers in the UK. Particularly when you consider the size of the US market in the first place, there is plenty of business to be done in a straight forward uncomplicated way to worry about all thek hassle involved selling in the UK and EU. These systems seem to be very much geared towards business for the huge companies like Amazon etc and the large dept stores (John Lewis, Frasers, Boots etc) in the uk. :-(
 
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