Importing a commercial kitchen exhaust system goes wrong in four places, and none of them is the specification: the Incoterm the purchase order accepted, the pre-shipment inspection nobody wrote into the contract, the lead time that was never back-planned from the handover date, and the spare parts that did not travel in the same container. What follows is the arithmetic an importer can check before signing, covering Incoterms 2020 cost and risk transfer, container volume derived from packed cubic metres, the inspection and document set that clears customs, a 70 to 110 day schedule model, and a ten-line purchase-order checklist.
1. Landed cost is not the unit price
Two importers buy the same 2 m canopy hood. One negotiates 18 percent off the unit price and lands at 3,900 per unit. The other pays list and lands at 3,400, because the first one shipped twenty units in a shared container with 18 m3 of somebody else’s cargo, paid consolidation and destination handling, and then air-freighted a replacement fan eight weeks later at four times its ex-works value. Unit price is the smallest number in the file.
Freight is charged on chargeable weight, and for hoods, cabinets and duct sections the chargeable measure is always volume. A 20 ft general purpose container holds roughly 28 m3 of usable space; a 40 ft high cube holds about 65 to 68 m3 once the door header and the unusable last 20 cm are allowed for. If an order packs to 14 m3, the importer is either paying for air inside a container shared with strangers or paying handling twice. LCL co-loading also brings a risk that does not appear on any quote: the crates travel above and below freight that is not yours, and the damage is discovered at destination, after the seal was cut by somebody else.
The practical break-even sits around 12 to 15 m3 on most lanes. Under 12 m3, LCL is cheaper. Between 15 and 30 m3, a 20 ft container is almost always ahead. Above 30 m3 the 40 ft high cube wins, and above 60 m3 the choice is two containers or a different packing design. Duty and VAT then land on the customs value: five percent duty plus twenty percent VAT on a CIF value of 68,000 adds 17,000 before the goods reach the floor, and unloading, crane and last-mile delivery are still the buyer’s unless the term says otherwise.
2. Incoterms: the term decides who pays and who is exposed
Five terms appear on kitchen-equipment purchase orders. Each moves a different block of cost and a different moment of risk, and the difference shows up on the day something arrives bent.
| Term | Seller books and pays | Risk passes to buyer | Buyer still pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| EXW | Nothing beyond making the goods available | At the seller’s premises | Export clearance, inland haulage, freight, insurance, duty, unloading |
| FOB | Inland haulage and export clearance to the named port | When the goods are on board the vessel | Ocean freight, insurance, duty, unloading, inland delivery |
| CIF | Freight plus minimum insurance, 110 percent of value at ICC(C) | When the goods are on board the vessel | Duty, unloading, inland delivery, and any damage ICC(C) does not cover |
| DAP | Freight to the named place | On arrival at the named place, not unloaded | Unloading and crane, import clearance, duty, VAT |
| DDP | Everything, duty included | On arrival at the named place, not unloaded | Unloading, and often the compliance duty that comes with being importer of record |
Three traps recur in this trade. First, CIF insurance is a minimum, not a solution: 110 percent of value at Institute Cargo Clauses (C), which excludes handling damage in most of the claims that actually happen to a cabinet dropped from a tail-lift. Where equipment is being craned into a basement or lifted over a facade, buy ICC(A) cover yourself and name your own entity as loss payee. Second, DAP is not delivered and installed. The moment the truck arrives, the crane, the tail-lift and the labour are the buyer’s, and a 300 kg cabinet that cannot be unloaded sits on the kerb accruing demurrage while the driver waits. Third, DDP reads as the simplest line on the order and is usually the most expensive: a seller who is not registered for VAT in the destination country cannot lawfully act as importer of record, so clearance runs through an agent, the Declaration of Conformity ends up naming a party with no establishment in that market, and the first inspection finds a file that does not hold together.
3. Packed cubic metres: the number that sets the freight
Ask for the packed volume per unit rather than the product dimensions. Cabinets travel on pallets with corner protection, canopies travel knocked down, and electrostatic cells travel in foam-lined crates. The gap between catalogue dimensions and packing reality is large enough to change the container decision.
| Item | Planning packed volume | Units per 20 ft (28 m3) | Units per 40 ft HC (66 m3) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Floor-standing cabinet unit, 520 x 700 x 1050 mm | 0.74 m3 | 37 | 89 |
| Taller cabinet unit, 520 x 700 x 1200 mm | 0.83 m3 | 33 | 79 |
| Canopy hood, 2 m, knocked down | 0.6 to 0.9 m3 | 31 to 46 | 73 to 110 |
| Centrifugal fan, 1.5 kW, crated | 0.5 to 0.8 m3 | 35 to 56 | 82 to 132 |
| Activated carbon, 20 kg carton | 0.06 to 0.08 m3 | 350 to 466 | 825 to 1,100 |
Two constraints override the volume count. Stacking first: cabinets stack two or three high on pallets and canopies stack two high, but nothing heavy goes on top of a fan crate or a carbon carton, so a mixed load wastes more space than the sum of its parts suggests. Weight second: a 20 ft container accepts about 28 tonnes of payload, but the road serving a city-centre site may not, and a container packed to the roof with hoods can exceed a 24 tonne axle limit before it leaves the port.
Send the packing list to the forwarder with the enquiry, not after the booking. For a mixed order, the ductless range hood range ships most efficiently when canopies travel knocked down and the carbon travels in separate cartons rather than inside the hood crate, where it becomes inaccessible at the first filter change and adds dead volume to every unit.
4. Pre-shipment inspection: six records worth more than the discount
An inspection clause costs nothing to write and is the only leverage that exists after the balance payment has cleared. Six records should be contract deliverables, not favours:
Golden sample before mass production. One unit, photographed at six angles, signed off by both parties. The photograph set becomes the contractual reference; a verbal agreement about finish does not survive a container of twenty.
Airflow and static pressure at the duty point. The reading in m3/h and Pa, per serial number, signed and dated at the works. Free-air figures are marketing; the duty point figure is what the commissioning engineer will compare against on site. For a ducted high-volume system, this record is the only proof that will ever exist that the unit met its design point before it left, which is why the ducted ESP purifier range is tested unit by unit at the works and the record travels with the crate.
Nameplate. Voltage, frequency, phase, model, serial number, and the CE mark with the notified body number where one applies. Photograph it, because a nameplate that says 60 Hz on a 50 Hz order is discovered by an electrician, not by a forwarder.
Cell build. Plate spacing, ceramic insulators free of cracks and chips, high-voltage power supply part number matching the datasheet, and the door interlock present and functioning. These four checks catch most of the failures that appear in the first month of operation.
Crate and marking photographs. Shipping marks, unit count, this-way-up orientation, moisture barrier intact. Marking errors are cheap to fix at the factory and expensive at destination.
Loading photographs plus a run-test video. The container number and the seal number visible in the same frame, and two minutes of video showing fan start, cell energised, no arcing, no abnormal vibration. A video is not a laboratory test, but it settles the argument about whether a unit was ever run at all.
5. The document set that clears customs
Customs does not ask about capture efficiency. It asks for a commercial invoice showing the Incoterm and the HS code, a packing list that reconciles to the invoice line by line, the bill of lading, a certificate of origin, and for regulated markets the Declaration of Conformity with the supporting test reports. Add the installation pack: datasheet, wiring diagram, clearance dimensions. The electrician on site needs the wiring diagram in the language of the site, and a document that arrives three weeks after the container is a second shipment.
Classification deserves a broker’s opinion rather than a guess. Hoods with an integral fan commonly fall under 8414.60, filtration machinery under 8421.39, and the choice changes both the duty rate and whether the goods fall inside any anti-dumping scope. A missing Declaration of Conformity is the expensive one: clearance can be held two to six weeks, and no amount of emailing from the quay cures a document that was never issued.
6. Lead time: back-plan from the handover, never forward from the order
Purchase orders are dated on the day they are signed. Handover dates are fixed by a lease, a licence inspection or an opening booking. The two are reconciled by one calculation, and it is usually done too late.
| Stage | Working range | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Production, catalogue configurations | 30 to 45 days | After deposit and drawing approval |
| Production, configured or custom | 60 to 75 days | Add 10 days for approval rounds |
| Sea transit, China to northern Europe | 30 to 40 days | Plus 5 to 10 days port congestion |
| Sea transit, China to US West Coast | 14 to 20 days | Rail to interior adds 7 to 12 |
| Sea transit, China to the Gulf | 20 to 25 days | Jebel Ali routing |
| Sea transit, China to Southeast Asia | 7 to 14 days | Manila, Cebu, Ho Chi Minh, Port Klang |
| Import clearance | 3 to 10 days | Longer if documents are queried |
| Inland delivery and unloading | 2 to 7 days | Crane booking is the variable |
| Installation and commissioning | 3 to 7 days | Per cookline, preceded by ductwork |
Read end to end, a standard order runs 70 to 110 days from deposit to commissioning, and a configured order 100 to 140. Against a 90 day fit-out programme the margin is thin, and against a fixed opening date it is negative unless something is deliberately overlapped. Three levers work: split the shipment so the canopies that set the ductwork route arrive first and the cabinets follow; approve drawings before the deposit rather than after; and air-freight the wear items that would otherwise stop commissioning while the sea freight is still at anchor.
7. Payment terms and the leverage each one buys
Thirty percent deposit and seventy percent before shipment is the common structure, and it is also the structure that strips the buyer of leverage at exactly the wrong moment. Two adjustments are worth negotiating. First, tie the balance to inspection rather than to a shipping date: the seventy percent is released on receipt of the six records in section 4, not on notice that the container is booked. Second, hold five to ten percent against commissioning, released when the measured airflow at the duty point matches the factory record within ten percent.
A letter of credit at sight costs roughly 0.5 to 1.5 percent of value in bank charges and buys a level of document control that a bank transfer cannot; it also fails on form, so a single spelling difference in the goods description produces a discrepancy fee and a delay measured in weeks. Whoever proposes the credit should also state who pays the charges at each end, because the OUR and SHA boxes are the cheapest argument in the file and the most tedious.
8. Spare parts that must travel in the same container
The wear items on a kitchen exhaust system are known before the order is placed: electrostatic cells and their collector plates, ceramic insulators, sealing strips, the high-voltage power supply, and the activated carbon charge. A second shipment for any of these typically costs 600 to 1,200 in freight plus three to five weeks, which is more than the spares themselves. Budget two to three percent of order value for a spares kit inside the same container, and size the quantities against the maintenance cycle rather than against a round number: cells washed every two to four weeks in a heavy-fume kitchen, carbon changed every three to six months.
Mobile units change the list. A cart that runs at markets, festivals and forecourt pitches accumulates wear on a different schedule from a fixed cookline, and it cannot be taken out of service for a part that is three weeks away by sea, so the mobile food cart range should carry its own wear set and a spare cell in the same crate as the unit.
9. Unloading, damage and the claim window
Photograph the container doors before they are opened, then photograph every crate before it is moved, and sign the delivery note as received subject to inspection rather than as clean. The claim calendar is short: visible damage is normally claimable within three days of delivery, concealed damage within seven to fourteen depending on the carrier’s terms, and carrier liability is capped by weight rather than by value, which is why cargo insurance is not an optional line. Keep the crates until the claim is settled; most insurers decline a claim where the packaging was discarded before survey.
10. Voltage, frequency and the line item that must not be left to the datasheet
Kitchen exhaust equipment is quoted in a global catalogue and built for one market. Europe, the Gulf, Southeast Asia and Australia run 230 V at 50 Hz. North America runs 120 V and 208 to 240 V at 60 Hz. Japan splits between 100 V at 50 and 60 Hz by region, and Brazil runs 127 and 220 V at 60 Hz. Put voltage, frequency, phase and plug standard on a purchase order line, confirm the nameplate on the drawings before production, and photograph it at inspection. A fan built for the wrong frequency runs at the wrong speed and delivers the wrong airflow, which is discovered at commissioning as a capture failure rather than as an electrical fault.
11. Ten lines to read aloud before signing
- Incoterm, named place, and who pays unloading and crane.
- Packed volume per unit and total, reconciled against the container booked.
- Duty point airflow in m3/h and static pressure in Pa, as an acceptance figure.
- Nameplate voltage, frequency and phase, stated on a line item.
- Golden sample sign-off date, before mass production starts.
- Six inspection records as a condition of balance payment.
- Declaration of Conformity and test reports, named as documents with a due date.
- Spares kit content, quantity and packing position.
- Delivery date to site, penalties or remedies, and who books the crane.
- Retention percentage, release trigger, and warranty start date measured from commissioning rather than from the bill of lading.
12. What the order file reveals about the equipment
None of the logistics above rescues the wrong architecture, and the purchase order tends to expose it. If the site cannot take a duct route, the equipment in the container is a self-contained hood that pairs a multi-stage electrostatic cell with an activated carbon stage, and the packed volumes quoted earlier are exactly what the freight was calculated on: 0.74 to 0.83 m3 per cabinet unit at the shallow end of the N-series and ND-series all-in-one line, and 0.6 to 0.9 m3 for a knocked-down 2 m canopy at the other.
Where the building can carry a full duct run and the cooking load is heavy, the order should split into a purification unit with an ESP Purifiers cell section plus a centrifugal fan selected at the duty point rather than at free air, and the inspection record in section 4 is what ties the two together. For a container that has to serve a market stall or a pop-up pitch alongside a fixed restaurant, the cart models ship as one crated unit with the hood and the cell already assembled, which is the only configuration that survives a five-day event schedule.
The test of a good import order is dull: the container volume matches the booking, the nameplates match the site, the inspection records arrive before the balance, the schedule was built backwards from the handover, and the spares are already in the crate. Buyers who get those five right usually discover that the specification argument was settled months earlier.
