Shipping time from Japan to South Africa
Shipping Japan to South Africa - How Long
How many days does shipping from Japan to South Africa take by boat? i.e. how long does it take if shipping cargo using the services of freight shipping company to South Africa?
If you are shipping some merchandise from Japan to South Africa, moving out of Japan and shipping your household goods or you are in South Africa and having some goods you purchased shipped from Japan, perhaps you will be interested to know how long the shipping will take as well as the shipping cost.
When you are shipping cargo via ocean to South Africa from Japan, it is most likely that you are shipping the cargo as LCL (Less-than-Container Load shipments). LCL is, in another word, a consolidation and your shipment will be in a consolidation container together with cargo of other customers. LCL shipments from Japan to South Africa are normally transshipped at the port of Singapore, which is a major hub port in South East Asia. Once the shipments leave Japan, the container will arrive at the hub port and then they will be consolidated with other cargo to the same destination in South Africa together which are not only from Japan but also from other countries in North Asia. Transshipping makes it possible to ship to destinations where there are not many cargo is bound for and importantly makes the cost economical. Otherwise one would need to rent a full container to send a small amount of shipments or consolidators must ship using a full container with too much unused space which make the transportation cost high.
The destinations in South Africa where consolidation services are available from Japan are: Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town.
The actual port-to-port shipping time from Japan to South Africa is 27 to 34 days.
Take a consignment on a ship which leaves Tokyo Port on April 1, it will be expected to arrive at a port in South Africa on or about May 1.
However, this is simply a port-to-port shipping time and there are many other factors that need to be taken into consideration when estimating the total shipping time since it take days for arranging customs clearance and loading shipments to containers to make a consolidation and the containers are loaded onto the vessel at the origin port.
Wherever the shipping destination is, the following points must be taken into consideration in order to estimate the total shipping time to South Africa from Japan.
1) All international sea cargo must be cleared through Japan Customs and this process takes a few days. (Invoice and packing list must be submitted to the customs and if necessary they will conduct an inspection, however, they try to inspect so that the shipment will make it on time for the scheduled vessel.) Customs brokers also need some time to prepare for customs clearance.
2) Consolidators arrange loading shipments into containers about 5 days prior to the departure date of the vessel. This is done at the bonded warehouse of outbound cargo, which is also referred to as CFS (Container Freight Station).
3) Frequency of ships’ departure is normally once or twice per week with the exception of holiday seasons i.e. there is one or two consolidations per week.
4) Cargo needs to be delivered to the CFS a few days before customs clearance date. They will also check the weight and the volume of the shipments after freights are delivered there.
Taking these into account, it will be prudent to estimate that the total transit time from the time when the cargo is delivered to the CFS in Japan to arrival at the ports in South Africa will be about days.
Also, it takes a few days for the containers to be unloaded from the ship, delivered to the CFS and then unloaded from the container at the CFS.
Shipping time from Japan to other counties in Africa
Are there shipping services from Japan to other countries? Although Africa is a large continent with a number of countries, it is a hard continent if one tries to ship freight from Japan. However, some consolidators in Japan offers shipping services by sea to countries such as Tanzania and Kenya. Shipping time from Japan to Mombasa, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam are approximately 53 days. Both shipments to Kenya and Tanzania are transshipped at Dubai, UAE.