Sea freight China to Singapore: LCL priced per CBM, hub to door

1What sea LCL is, and who it suits

LCL stands for less than container load. Your cartons share a container with other importers' cargo, and you pay only for the space yours take up, measured in cubic metres. That sharing is what makes a single cubic metre worth shipping by sea at all: a whole container is a serious commitment, a corner of one is not.

It suits a Singapore SME moving anywhere from a cubic metre to a few pallets, where cost matters more than speed: 1688 orders, factory sample runs, a restock that can wait a fortnight, shop fittings, packaging, spare parts. If you buy from several suppliers, LCL is also the mode that lets us consolidate them into one consignment, one permit and one delivery.

Shiplet is an agent that books your cargo onto carriers; we are not a carrier ourselves, and we work one route only, China to Singapore, by sea and by air. Express courier and single parcels are a different business and not one we offer. The freight forwarder page sets out what we do and how to compare one forwarder's price with another's. For the whole route in one place, including air, GST and restricted goods, start with the guide to shipping from China to Singapore.

2How sea freight China to Singapore is priced: per CBM

Our sea LCL rate is S$82 per CBM, hub to door, with a minimum of 1 CBM. Anything under the minimum is billed as the minimum, which comes to S$82. There is no separate line for the permit, the clearance or the Singapore delivery; they are inside the per-CBM figure. The rate is indicative until it is on your confirmed quote, and nothing is booked and nothing is payable until you accept that quote.

What a CBM is

A CBM is a cubic metre: a carton's length × width × height, in metres. One CBM is the volume of a box a metre on each side. Sea freight is priced mainly on volume because a container usually fills up long before it gets heavy. The exception is heavy cargo: LCL is charged on the greater of the volume and the weight at 500 kg per CBM, so 1,000 kg counts as 2 CBM. A carton of cushions is charged on its size; a carton of hand tools the same size is heavy enough to be charged on its weight. Your packing list gives us both figures.

A worked example: cartons to CBM to an indicative cost

1. Measure one carton. Say it is 60 cm long, 40 cm wide and 50 cm high. In metres that is 0.6 × 0.4 × 0.5 = 0.12 CBM.
2. Multiply by the carton count. Ten of those cartons make 1.2 CBM.
3. Multiply the volume by the rate. 1.2 CBM × S$82 per CBM is your indicative hub-to-door freight. GST at 9% on the import value is added at clearance and paid with the freight when your cargo reaches Singapore.
4. Check the minimum. Six of the same cartons are 0.72 CBM, under the 1 CBM minimum, so they are billed at S$82. Above the minimum you pay per CBM.

If you have more than one carton size, the CBM calculator adds them up and gives you the indicative sea figure from the published rate, together with the chargeable weight if you want to compare air. The short version is here.

3What the LCL rate includes and excludes

The per-CBM rate is a hub-to-door figure. This is what sits inside it and what does not.

Cargo cover means that if cartons go missing in transit you are compensated in full at the declared invoice value; damage is assessed case by case. Tell us about stairs, a fixed delivery window or a site with no loading bay when you ask for the quote, so it is priced in advance rather than discovered on the day.

One delivery lorry takes 20 CBM. A single LCL shipment over 20 CBM chargeable pays S$300 for each further 20 CBM or part of it; exactly 20 CBM pays nothing extra. To avoid it, book shipments of 20 CBM or less, or go FCL.

4Full containers: 20', 40' and 40'HC are quote-only

If your order fills a container on its own, FCL puts the whole box at your disposal: a 20-foot, a 40-foot or a 40-foot high cube. We do not print a container price because carrier rates for full containers move weekly, and a figure that was right on Monday is wrong by Friday. So FCL is quoted per booking: tell us the container size, the goods and when they are ready, and the confirmed quote follows in writing within a few hours, priced on the day's carrier rate.

Transit is the same 10–14 days hub to door as LCL, and it still ends at your door: the permit, the clearance and the Singapore delivery are part of the job. Because the container is yours, nothing in it is handled at a consolidation warehouse; tell us where the goods are when you ask for the quote and we set out the loading arrangement in writing with the price.

FCL suits steady volume and goods you would rather nobody else stacked anything on top of: furniture, fixtures, fragile or bulky items. As your volume grows, the honest approach is to have LCL and FCL quoted side by side for the same shipment, and we give both quotes on request. The LCL vs FCL guide sets out the differences in handling and pricing, and the furniture shipping guide covers measuring, packing and delivery for the bulkiest cargo of all.

5Transit time, departures and the cut-off

Sea freight takes 10–14 days hub to door: from the day your cargo leaves the Foshan hub to the day it is delivered to your Singapore address, with the import permit and customs clearance done inside that window. We never quote port-to-port transit times, because a container sitting at a Singapore terminal is no use to you until it has been cleared and delivered.

Departures run Monday to Saturday. Cargo received at the hub on a working day leaves on the next working day. The cut-off is 5:00pm on the working day before departure, Saturdays included. The hub receives cargo Mon–Sat, 8:00am – 5:00pm. Chinese New Year, typhoon season and a customs inspection can add days; the transit times guide shows the next departure, the cut-off and the ETA computed for today.

6Consolidating several suppliers into one shipment

Most 1688 orders and many factory orders come from more than one supplier. Each of them delivers to the Foshan hub. We receive each delivery, count the cartons against your packing list and tell you if the numbers do not match, before anything sails rather than after. The hub holds your earlier cartons free for 5 days while the rest arrive, then ships everything as one consignment under one permit with one Singapore delivery.

Two practical points. The transit clock starts when the last carton is in, so time your suppliers to land within a few days of each other. And storage beyond the free 5 days is charged at S$20 per CBM per day, so a supplier who is weeks late can cost you more than the freight itself. If you are buying for a business through 1688, the 1688 shipping guide covers the supplier side.

7Shipping from Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan and the rest of China

You do not need a supplier in Foshan. Suppliers anywhere in China deliver to our Foshan hub by domestic logistics, which they arrange and which is not part of our rate. Foshan sits in the Pearl River Delta beside Guangzhou, so factories in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Zhongshan are a short domestic run away; suppliers in Yiwu, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Fujian or Shandong use the same domestic freight networks they already use for their Chinese customers. Give your supplier the address below exactly as written; the Chinese version is the one their courier needs. If you ship by air instead, the supplier delivers to our air freight warehouse in Shenzhen; the air freight guide has that address.

Your booking confirmation gives you a marking code, WHL/SHIPLET/ followed by five characters, for that order only; your next booking gets a new one. Ask your supplier to write it on every carton with the carton number (1/20, 2/20 and so on), so the hub can match a delivery to your booking the moment it arrives. On a 1688 order sent by courier, put the code in the recipient name as well. Once the cartons are received and counted, you hear from us, and the cargo leaves on the next working-day departure.

8Documents, GST and payment

Two documents cover almost every sea shipment: a commercial invoice (what the goods are, the quantity, unit price, total value and currency) and a packing list (carton count, dimensions and weights). Once you accept your confirmed quote we email you a link to upload both, and the permit is lodged without delay.

GST at 9% is charged on the import value, which Singapore Customs defines as the CIF value: the cost of the goods plus insurance and freight, plus duty if any. Duty applies only to liquor, tobacco, motor vehicles and petroleum products; everything else is duty-free but still GST-liable. We lodge the permit as Registered Declaring Agent, pay the GST at clearance and pass it through at cost, so it appears on your invoice alongside the freight. The value declared must be the real invoice value. The GST and customs clearance guide goes through it step by step, and the rules themselves are on Singapore Customs' GST page.

You pay when your cargo reaches Singapore, before we deliver it, by PayNow or bank transfer: the freight and the GST together. We take no card details and no deposit.

Both documents are set out line by line, with a filled-in example, in what the commercial invoice and packing list must show. If your supplier quotes FOB, EXW or DDP, read Incoterms when buying from China before you agree the price.

9Getting a sea freight quote

Send the carton dimensions and count through the quote form. The instant quote appears as you type and you get a reference number immediately; the confirmed quote follows in writing within a few hours, with the all-in figure, the transit window and the next departure. Nothing is booked and nothing is payable until you confirm. If you would rather talk it through first, WhatsApp +65 8162 1037 or email info@empiricalmarine.com; we answer every day, 9:00am to 6:00pm Singapore time.

Shiplet has moved 140,000+ CBM across 9,000+ shipments on this one route. It is a freight-forwarding brand of Empirical Marine and Trading Pte. Limited, UEN 202418701E, a Registered Declaring Agent with Singapore Customs.