As you may be aware from recent news articles, British ports are under increased strain due to higher than usual volumes of containers being shipped into the country. This is mainly due to 3 factors:

Most companies are trying to stockpile goods before the Brexit cut-off date of 31st December.

There is a severe container storage leading to delays in procurement. This is mainly due to reopening of the Asian factories after coronavirus lockdowns.

Port congestion is leading to last minute diverts or detouring resulting in longer than expected timelines.

These mean that from time to time it may be necessary to alter the expected arrival of a container at the very last moment as we may not find out the container has not been discharged until the vessel has been unable to dock or has had to leave the port before all the containers have been off-loaded.

In addition, even when the container is on the dock, there may be a delay in it actually being delivered to its final destination. This is due to a shortage of drivers within the haulage industry.

Therefore, we would ask for your understanding if a container is unexpectedly delayed at the last minute.

All of the above has resulted in unprecedented increase in shipping costs and we are compelled to temporarily pass that on to the you.

This temporary levy will be applicable from 01/01/2021 until further notice.

This will appear as below –

Temporary Shipping Levy – £2 per product for orders placed from 01/01/2021 until further notice.

We apologise for the inconvenience. To keep the operations smooth and commercially viable, as well as to continue to secure the container slots in an overheated market, we are compelled to take this extremely unfortunate decision.