Standard clearance is the default.
Bonded is the cash-flow lever nobody is showing you.
Every importer pays duty + VAT + brokerage on day one of EU entry. Few realise bonded warehousing can defer that cash outflow for months — or, if goods are re-exported, avoid duty and VAT entirely. We compute both side-by-side, with TARIC chapter-level duty rates, all 27 EU national VAT rates, brokerage fees, and the bonded math (storage + bond fee + cost-of-capital benefit).
Goods stored under customs supervision. Liability suspended. Two exit paths.
No duty or VAT on arrival. Goods move under customs supervision into an AEO-authorised bonded warehouse — a standard public bonded site or a partner facility we coordinate.
A financial guarantee covers the suspended duty + VAT liability. Typical fee is ~1.2% of customs value. The guarantee can be a partner bank facility (we arrange) or your own.
EU customs warehousing has no statutory storage limit. Goods can be repackaged, relabelled (limited operations), and consolidated — but not modified, sold, or used while in bonded regime.
Release into free circulation: duty + VAT paid at exit, at the rate in force on that day. Re-export: goods leave EU customs territory; duty and VAT are never paid. Bonded is the only legal way to skip both.
Samples, returns, transit consolidation
If goods will leave the EU again — supplier returns, sample distribution to non-EU buyers, Asia-Africa transit — bonded re-export skips duty and VAT entirely. Savings usually exceed bonded fees by an order of magnitude.
- Duty avoided in full
- VAT avoided in full
- Bonded storage €5–15 / cbm / month
- 1.2% bond on customs value
Seasonal goods, dead-stock SKUs
If goods sell over 90+ days, the cash-flow benefit of deferring duty + VAT compounds. At 6% cost of capital + €100k customs value, deferring six months frees €1,800 in working capital. That can exceed bonded fees on larger consignments.
Fast-movers (sold < 30 days)
Goods clearing your books inside a month rarely benefit from bonded — storage and bond fees exceed any cash-flow benefit. Most retail and DTC importers default to standard for the bulk of stock and use bonded only on long-tail SKUs.
Both routes priced side-by-side, in about sixty seconds.
The wizard captures the inputs once. The platform returns standard-clearance landed cost + the bonded alternative with the cash-flow break-even spelled out.