Your Incoterm decides who pays freight, who carries the risk, and — the part most importers miss — what value SARS charges duty on. Here's each term in plain English, with the South African implications spelled out.
The supplier makes the goods available at their factory. You arrange export clearance at origin, inland haulage, ocean freight, and everything at the SA side. Cheapest headline price, most risk — and many origin-country suppliers cannot legally act as exporter of record for you, which is where EXW shipments stall.
The supplier delivers, export-cleared, to a named place at origin — often the forwarder's warehouse or the container terminal. FCA is the correct term for containerised or air cargo where FOB is technically wrong, and it's the term we usually recommend for LCL consolidations out of China and India.
The workhorse term for South African sea imports. The supplier covers origin costs and export clearance up to loading onto the vessel; you control the ocean freight, marine insurance, SA clearing, and delivery. This gives you the clearest view of what freight actually costs — and the cleanest FOB value to declare to SARS.
The supplier books and pays the ocean freight to Durban, Cape Town, Ngqura, or Port Elizabeth. Risk still passes to you at origin on loading, so an uninsured loss at sea is yours. The freight cost sits inside the supplier's invoice, which is why the invoice must show it separately for customs valuation.
CFR plus minimum-cover marine insurance. Convenient, but the supplier chooses the shipping line and the insurance level (often only Institute Cargo Clauses C). CIF is also the basis SARS uses when adding freight and insurance to value goods, so a CIF invoice must break out goods, freight, and insurance separately.
The supplier delivers to a named address in South Africa but the import clearance, duty, and VAT remain yours. Workable — but the supplier's nominated agent controls the container until it lands, so demurrage and local charges are often out of your hands.
Maximum convenience, usually the worst commercial outcome for an SA importer. A non-resident supplier paying import VAT cannot claim it back, so the 15% becomes permanent cost inside your landed price. It also hides the duty rate and tariff heading being used on your goods.
FOB for containerised sea freight in most cases, FCA for LCL and air. Both leave you controlling the freight leg and clearing in your own name under your own SARS customs code — which is where the savings and the visibility live.
Indirectly, yes. The term determines what's bundled into the supplier's invoice, and the invoice determines the customs value declared on the SAD 500. A clean FOB breakdown is the simplest way to make sure you're not paying duty on freight.
Rarely. The convenience costs you the import VAT claim and hides the tariff heading applied to your goods. If you're currently on DDP, that's usually the first line item we look at in a free logistics audit.
Send us a recent commercial invoice and we'll tell you what it's actually costing you. You can also read our step-by-step SARS clearing process guide or see how our customs clearing service works.