Manual for car (motorbike) container shipping BUE-HAM (Verschiffung)

Blaz Miheljak , Montag, 30. April 2007, 22:04 (vor 6204 Tagen)

Manual for car (motorbike) container shipping BUE-HAM

This is mostly factographic account on shipping a container from Buenos Aires to Hamburg. Data is based on the shipping that occurred in the last week of March 2007, but there is of course no guarantee for correctness... You can also read a blog on the shipping at habbeger.name (in German). This are the basic steps:

1. Book a container at a shipping company.
We sent mails to all major ones, got quotes from MSC and Hamburg Sud and made a booking with MSC which was way cheaper.

2. For export customs you'll need notary verified copies of the owner's passport (complete with blank pages and covers), the car registration/title papers and of the flight ticket/reservation. You can do all this in advance, in every bigger town around the country.
We didn't have the tickets at the moment of shipping, so we just made a reservation at Iberia for the first possible flight, got a printout and customs was satisfied with that. Although a reservation is not worth anything and doesn't prove a thing, we had to produce this paper... Notaries are called "escribanos" in Argentina and are plenty. But they charge very differently for the same thing (we paid 30 pesos, our Swiss coshippers paid 30 usd), some count sheets, some have a fixed price per document, so shop around and be creative when copying a passport - you can get at least 8 pages on one sheet of copy... If you are doing this outside of BsAs, you have to mention, that the verification must be valid in BsAs, so that they add some extra stamp...

3. Go to your shipping company, get an original booking confirmation printout (which includes shippers name, car details and ship/sail details) and make a date for consolidation.
We had a little bit of a problem, persuading MSC, that consolidation can be done directly in the port and that we don't need any agent, but after some checking, they confirmed, that it is possible and have been very helpful with the whole process. For consolidation the best date is probably one day after aduana but at least two days before sailing, shipping company will tell you the cut-off time anyway. Consolidation cannot be done on weekends. MSC acted as a consolidation coordinator, made orders and produced a paper with details of consolidation, merchandise/car, date, place and contacts of all people involved (us, port contacts, customs contacts, MSC contacts).

4. Go to Adouana office for "Exportacion/Importacion de equipaje no acompanada" at EMBA (Estación Marítima Buenos Aires) and where they will prepare a "Solicitud de exportacion de efectos personales"
Office at EMBA is open from 9.30-13.00 and 14.00-17.00. Lines and waiting can be quite long, so it's best to be there around 9am. You'll need to present:
- Full copy of passport (notary verified)
- Copy of car papers (notary verified)
- Copy of the traveling documents (notary verified?), we had an original reservation printout
- Original paper confirming your booking of container from the shipping company
- Original temporary importation paper which you got when entering the country
We were at the office at 9am, had to wait an hour, then the whole procedure didn't took more than 15mins. The officer will make some copies, fill in some forms and then prepare a nice package of papers with cover "Solicitud de exportacion de efectos personales"

Continues in next post because of length limitations...