Shipping a container to Ghana

Shared container or a box of your own

The first decision is whether you take a whole container or buy space inside someone else’s, and it is decided by volume rather than by budget. If what you are sending fills less than about half a twenty-foot box, groupage — a shared load — is almost always the sensible answer. If you are emptying a three-bedroom house in London or Maryland, a container of your own usually costs less per item and causes far less trouble at the other end.

Groupage means your goods travel in a container alongside three or four other consignments. The consolidator loads everyone together, ships it, and then the whole box has to be stripped at a bonded warehouse in Tema before anyone gets anything. That stripping is where the delay lives. Your fifteen boxes cannot be released until every other consignee in that container has paid, produced documents and cleared. One person who has gone quiet holds up everybody.

A full container is yours from the moment it is sealed. It is stripped when you say so, at a place you choose, and nothing in it belongs to a stranger. The trade-off is that you pay for the whole box whether it is full or not, and you carry the whole duty bill at once rather than in a share.

My honest advice to people sending a few sofas and some clothes is not to ship at all. Once you add freight, duty, agent’s fees and haulage to Kasoa or Kumasi, a second-hand dining set from abroad often costs more than a better one made in Ghana. Ship the things you cannot replace and buy the rest here.

What actually fits in twenty and forty feet

A twenty-foot container holds the contents of a modest flat; a forty-foot holds a family house with room left over. Those are the two sizes you will be offered for personal effects, and the high-cube variant of the forty simply adds height, which matters if you are shipping a wardrobe or a fridge-freezer upright.

Think in furniture, not in cubic metres. A twenty-foot box will usually take a three-piece suite, a bed or two, a dining table with chairs, a fridge, a washing machine, a good stack of boxes and a few mattresses, with the awkward gaps filled by soft goods. A forty takes all of that plus a second bedroom set, a generator, building materials and, if you pack it properly, a small car.

The mistake is loading by shape rather than by weight. A container packed with tiles, cement, roofing sheets or books will hit its weight limit long before it fills, and an overweight box gets refused at the port of loading or attracts a surcharge that nobody warned you about. Ask your shipper for the maximum payload of the specific container and keep a running note of what you put in.

Leave nothing loose. Everything shifts at sea. The difference between a container that arrives tidy and one that arrives as a heap is timber bracing, straps and a floor-to-ceiling pack that cannot move. If you are shipping materials for a build, our guide to building a house in Ghana from abroad covers why some of those materials are better bought locally anyway.

The things that will stop your container

Some goods will hold your whole shipment at Tema and a few will get it seized, so the list is worth reading before you pack rather than after. Prohibited and restricted items are set by Ghanaian law and administered by the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, and that is the office to confirm the current position with — not a forum post and not your shipper’s memory.

Firearms and ammunition of any kind are a hard stop. So are narcotics, counterfeit goods and pornography. Pharmaceuticals in quantity attract the interest of the Food and Drugs Authority, and that includes a well-meaning box of medicines for relatives. Foodstuffs, plants, seeds and anything of animal origin fall under plant and veterinary controls and can be condemned on arrival.

Then there is the category that is not illegal but is a nuisance: gas cylinders, paint, aerosols, petrol in a lawnmower, anything under pressure. Empty the fuel tank of any machine you ship and say so on the inventory. A single half-full jerrycan can turn a routine inspection into a long one.

Used clothing and used goods for resale are treated differently from personal effects, and the line between “my household things” and “a trading consignment” is drawn by Customs, not by you. If a third of your container is identical new items, expect to be asked about it and expect commercial treatment.

The documents that decide how smoothly it goes

Clearance runs on documents, and a container with a sloppy inventory will always cost you more than one with a careful one. The core set is the bill of lading, a detailed packing list or inventory, your identification, and the tax identification details under which the goods are being entered.

The bill of lading is the title document. Whoever holds the original or the electronic release controls the cargo, so do not let it sit with an agent you have not appointed. Check the consignee name on it matches the name on the identification you will present in Tema, letter for letter. A middle name that appears on one and not the other is a genuine and common cause of delay.

The inventory needs to be specific. “Box 14: household items” invites an officer to open box 14. “Box 14: kitchen — pots, plates, cutlery, two kettles” does not. Number every box, list what is in it, and keep a copy on your phone. Declare electronics and appliances individually with make and model, because they are the items most likely to be valued.

You will also need a Ghana Card or, for a non-resident, the identification your agent advises, and a TIN for the entry. Since the national identification rollout, the card has become the default identifier for almost every official transaction; most residents will be asked for the card by name, and the National Identification Authority is the body to confirm your own position with.

The sea leg and why nobody can promise a date

The voyage itself is the most predictable part of the process and still nobody can give you a firm arrival date. Sailings from northern Europe and the east coast of North America to Tema are regular, transhipment through a European or West African hub is common, and the container may sit at that hub for longer than anyone budgeted.

What you should ask your shipper for is the vessel name, the voyage number and the estimated time of arrival, then track it yourself. Shipping lines publish vessel schedules and they update them. An agent who cannot tell you which ship your goods are on is an agent who does not know.

Plan around a range, not a date. If you are timing a container to land the same week you move into a house, you are setting yourself up to pay for storage or to sleep on a floor. Build in slack, and if you are coming to supervise the clearance, do not book a return flight ten days after the estimated arrival.

Peak periods make it worse. The run-up to Christmas, when a large share of diaspora shipping happens at once, congests both the loading ports and Tema. Sending in the quieter months of the year is one of the few genuinely free ways to reduce risk.

Tema, and the agent who makes or breaks it

Your container will almost certainly arrive at Tema, and from that moment the single most important variable is the clearing agent you appointed. Ghana clears cargo through an electronic customs system, declarations are lodged digitally, and the process is designed to be orderly. It is still a process that rewards someone who knows the building.

A licensed clearing agent lodges the declaration, arranges classification and valuation, handles inspection where the consignment is selected for it, pays the assessed duties on your instruction and arranges release. You can, in principle, do this yourself. Almost nobody should. The learning curve is expensive and it is being climbed while rent accrues on the box.

Choose the agent before the container sails, not after it lands. Ask for the licence, ask for the physical office, ask who specifically will handle your file and get a mobile number for that person. Agree in writing what their own fee covers and what is a disbursement paid on your behalf, and ask for receipts for every government payment. The difference between an honest agent and a bad one shows up as a single vague lump sum with no breakdown.

Pay government charges through official channels and keep the receipts. If you are transferring funds from abroad to cover clearance, do it in a way you can evidence — our piece on sending money to Ghana goes through the routes and their trade-offs.

How duty is worked out, and why quotes differ

Duty is assessed on the value of the goods as Customs determines it, not on what you paid or on what you say they are worth. That single sentence explains most of the arguments that happen at Tema. Classification, valuation and the applicable rates are matters for the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, and the only reliable figure is the one on your assessment notice.

Several charges sit on top of the import duty itself and vary by the kind of goods — levies, value added tax and other statutory items are applied according to the classification given to each line of your entry. That is why an honest agent quotes a range before assessment and a precise number after it, and why an agent who quotes an exact total before the declaration is lodged is guessing or building in a cushion.

Personal and household effects are treated differently from commercial goods, and there are provisions relating to returning residents. Your eligibility, and what the provision actually covers, depends on your circumstances and on current rules. Ask the Customs Division directly, in advance, and get the answer before the container sails rather than discovering the position at the port.

Do not undervalue your inventory in the hope of a smaller bill. Valuation is done by people who look at containers all day. An unrealistic declaration attracts scrutiny, scrutiny attracts examination, and examination attracts days — and days, as the next section explains, are the expensive part.

Demurrage and rent: the cost nobody plans for

The charge that ruins budgets is not the duty, it is the daily cost of a container sitting still. Two separate meters can run: demurrage, which the shipping line charges for the use of its container beyond an agreed free period, and port rent or storage, which the terminal charges for the ground the box is occupying.

Both begin after a free window that your shipping line sets, and both compound in the sense that every day of paperwork trouble adds to a bill you have not yet been shown. A container held for a fortnight because a consignee in a groupage load could not be reached, or because a name did not match an ID, can end up costing a meaningful share of what the shipment itself cost.

Duty is a number you can estimate. Demurrage is a number you create by being slow.

Everything you can do to shorten the clearance happens before arrival. Have the agent appointed and paid to start. Have the bill of lading released. Have funds in Ghana already, not in transit. Have somebody physically available in Accra or Tema who can answer a phone and go to an office the same morning.

If you cannot be in the country yourself, appoint one person you actually trust to act, and give them written authority. Relying on a relative who has a job and no particular interest in your sofas is how containers end up sitting for a month.

Getting it from the port to your gate

Clearance is not delivery, and the last thirty or eighty kilometres deserve their own plan. Once released, your container has to be hauled to wherever you are unloading, and the truck that carries a forty-foot box is a large articulated vehicle that needs somewhere to turn.

From Tema to most of Accra is a short run on paper and a long one in practice, because the route crosses the city and the city does not move quickly between about seven and nine in the morning or four and seven in the evening. Going west to Kasoa, Opeikuma or Weija adds the Mallam junction and the Kasoa stretch, which backs up in both directions with very little warning. Kumasi is a day’s work for the driver.

Look at your own street before the truck is booked. Unsurfaced access, a tight compound gate, overhead cables, a drainage ditch at the entrance, a slope — any of these can mean the container cannot reach the house. The usual answer is to strip the box at a yard and bring the contents in a smaller lorry, which costs more and takes a day, but it is far better to plan for it than to discover it with a driver idling outside.

Arrange labour in advance and be there when the box is opened. Count the boxes off against your inventory as they come out. That is the only moment when a shortage can be raised with any force.

Shipping a car inside the container

You can ship a vehicle to Ghana, either inside your container or on a roll-on roll-off service, but a car is a separate customs matter from your household goods and it is the part people most often get wrong. Vehicle duty is assessed on the vehicle’s own valuation and there are rules relating to the age of imported vehicles, which are set in legislation and administered by Customs.

Confirm the current position on vehicle age, classification and any penalties before you buy a car abroad to bring here. This changes, it has changed within recent memory, and an assumption based on what a friend did some years ago is not a basis for spending money.

Practically, a car inside a container has to be drained of most of its fuel, disconnected, braced and blocked so it cannot roll, and anything packed around it must be secured independently. Some consolidators will not accept a vehicle in a shared box at all.

Then there is the question of whether the car suits Ghana. Very low cars struggle with speed humps and unsurfaced side roads, and parts for unusual models are genuinely hard to source outside Accra and Kumasi. Common Japanese and Korean models are common here for a reason — every mechanic knows them and the parts exist in Abossey Okai. That is worth more than the specification you are attached to.

What actually goes wrong, in order of frequency

The failures repeat themselves, which is the good news, because a repeating failure can be planned against. The most common is a mismatch between the name on the bill of lading and the name on the identification presented at clearance, and it is entirely avoidable by checking the draft bill before it is issued.

Second is the groupage trap: a shared container held because another consignee has not paid or cannot be found. You have no control over that person and no leverage over them. If your goods are time-sensitive and your volume is near the threshold, paying for a full box buys you independence.

Third is the absent owner. Somebody has to be in Ghana making decisions in real time, and a relative pressed into it reluctantly is not that person. Fourth is the vague agent: no itemised account, no receipts, a request for more money with no document behind it. Ask for the assessment notice. It exists.

Fifth, and the saddest, is shipping the wrong things. Old white goods that will not survive the voltage and the humidity, flat-pack furniture that will not survive the journey, and a container of items that would have cost less to buy at Kasoa market or in Accra. A move home is an expensive time to be sentimental about a wardrobe. Our checklist for moving back to Ghana works through what is worth bringing and what is not.

Where Ghana Travel & Tour fits in a move

We do not clear containers, and we will tell you that plainly rather than take a fee to introduce you to someone. Shipping and customs clearance belong with a licensed clearing agent and with the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority.

What we do handle is the rest of the move. Airport pickup at Kotoka, a driver and vehicle for the days you spend going between Tema, an agent’s office and your house, and a fully furnished 3, 4 or 5-bedroom home in Kasoa Opeikuma to live in while your goods are still at sea. Quotes are itemised and come from one named trip manager.

Questions people ask