Easily the most direct way of shipping goods to Cyprus from the UK is to use air freight services. There are numerous air operators that provide cargo services to Paphos and Larnaca, the two international airports that serve the Republic of Cyprus in the south.
However, these are rarely affordable options. Air freight is one of the most expensive ways you can ship any commercial goods internationally. Even worse, your goods could easily be delayed after they touch down at the airport because Cypriot customs officials will need to make their inspections.
Since the southern part of Cyprus is a member state of the European Union, all of the trading bloc’s customs union rules apply. Although both international airports handle freight, most commercial shipments come into the country via seaports.
As such, airside inspections and queries with paperwork can cause significant delays in some cases meaning that the fast deliveries British exporters had hoped for are no longer apparent. Consequently, it is often better to opt for a more affordable sort of shipment instead. What are the main options available today?
Groupage Services
The use of groupage in international shipments isn’t related to Cyprus alone. That said, it is an affordable method of shipping freight to Cyprus from the UK that is very popular.
Given that Cyprus is in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, it is a very long way from the British Isles for a destination that is inside the EU. As such, sending goods that have been grouped with one another makes a great deal of sense.
According to Barrington Freight, a company based in Essex that provides both customs clearance and groupage services to British exporters, groupage is a convenient and cost-effective method of shipping to and from Cyprus.
In most cases, goods will be grouped with other deliveries that are heading to a similar location in the Republic of Cyprus, such as the capital Nicosia or Poli, a town in the northwest of the country.
The consignments are then loaded onto a truck or a similar vehicle and sent from a UK distribution centre to mainland Europe.
Typically, groupage services will involve road travel from northern France to a port in the Mediterranean Sea, such as Piraeus in Greece. From there, the goods will be loaded onto a cargo ferry or booked onto a roll-on/roll-off service.
Either way, it is only once groupage deliveries have arrived at their destination port that they will then be split up. Usually, local courier firms or Cypriot logistics companies take care of the final stage of the journey from the port or local distribution hub to the client’s address.
Of course, it isn’t possible for UK exporters to organise their own groupage deliveries unless they sell to Cypriot clients frequently. That’s why using an expert freight forwarding service is advisable.
Courier Deliveries
Unlike groupage services, courier deliveries do not need to hang around for other, similar requests for freight services to Cyprus to begin their journey. As such, they tend to be quicker than groupage services but they cost more, as a result.
Although lorries are sometimes used for courier deliveries to Cyprus, it is more common for agile commercial vans to be used instead. In some cases, couriers can be arranged to collect consignments from addresses in the UK on the same day.
The goods are then placed into transit to northern France via a cross-Channel ferry service or through the Channel Tunnel. Either way, a route will be selected to get the goods to southern Europe as quickly as possible. Lavrio and Piraeus are two ports close to Athens that have freight services connecting to Limassol, the main port in southern Cyprus.
Vans, rigid trucks and articulated lorries can all make use of Lavrio as an embarkation port. Of course, the main advantage of this is that the same driver(s) can be in charge of the delivery from door to door. Indeed, it may even be possible for an order to be picked up in Cyprus to bring back to the UK on the return journey, too.
Shipping to Northern Cyprus Affordably
Sending freight to the north of the island, officially named the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, means having to send your goods to Turkey first. It is not possible to convey freight to the north via any EU port.
However, there are multiple sailings from at least three different ports on the Turkish mainland that can be used. By far the cheapest way of getting freight to North Cyprus is with a groupage service due to the economies of scale involved.
