The pallet sat on our loading dock for two days last spring. The parts were done, packed, labeled — everything on our side finished. But the buyer's freight forwarder kept rescheduling the pickup, and nobody had told the forwarder that the buyer had already paid the balance. Three phone calls, one very patient truck driver, and it was sorted. That's EXW in real life: when the goods are ready, the clock belongs to the buyer.
We're a CNC machining shop in Bao'an, Shenzhen. Around 220 machines on the floor — machining centers, CNC lathes, a long row of Tsugami Swiss-types. We've been running for 13 years, and for most of that time we've had one trade term on the table: EXW, goods ex our workshop in Shenzhen. Not because we're difficult. Because of what happened when we tried to be flexible.
Years ago we quoted FOB for a German buyer. Our side arranged the trucking to the port, the export clearance, the booking confirmation — and then the vessel schedule slipped and the container missed its cutoff. Who ate the demurrage? We did, mostly, because when you sell FOB the port becomes your problem the moment the goods cross the ship's rail. One bad season of port delays cost us more than the margin on the whole order. After that, we picked the term where the risk stays with the party that actually controls the freight.
So here's what EXW means when you buy from us, stripped of the Incoterms jargon.
We make the parts. We pack them — wooden crates for anything heavy, EPE and cartons for small batches. We put them on a pallet with your markings. We tell you the gross weight and dimensions so your forwarder can quote. That's the whole job on our side. When your forwarder's driver shows up at the industrial park gate, someone from our warehouse walks them to the goods, checks the count, signs.
Everything after that is yours: trucking to the port or airport, export declaration, the booking, insurance if you want it, destination charges, import clearance at your end. A good forwarder handles all of it under one invoice, and most of our buyers never touch a customs form themselves.
The part people worry about is export clearance. Under EXW it's technically the buyer's job, and in practice your forwarder does it — they file it electronically in Shenzhen the same day they pick up. I can count on one hand the times it has actually held up a shipment, and every one of those was a forwarder who'd never exported machinery before and missed a document. Which is why we keep a short list of forwarders we've worked with and hand it to buyers who don't have one yet. Two of them speak decent English, one does weekly consol boxes to Europe. We don't take a cut. It just saves everyone the phone calls.
First-time importers sometimes push back: doesn't EXW mean we do all the work? Less than you'd think. The quote comparison that matters is the total landed cost, and a forwarder will give you that door-to-door number in an email. Where EXW genuinely gets annoying is very small shipments — a few hundred dollars of parts going air freight — because the fixed handling fees weigh heavy. For those we'll tell you honestly: sometimes having the forwarder consolidate with their weekly box beats a dedicated pickup.
One more thing worth knowing. Under EXW there's no name on the documents tying the export to us as the exporter of record, so if your market needs a certificate of origin with specific fields, tell us before we pack, not after. Last year a buyer in the Gulf needed the origin certificate to match his import license letter by letter; we had to reissue two documents because nobody asked until the crate was sealed. Sealed crates get unsealed slowly.
That's the whole arrangement. Parts ready at our dock in Shenzhen, a forwarder list if you need one, and a warehouse guy who will walk the driver to the goods even at five in the afternoon.
The pallet from last spring eventually left on a Thursday.
If you are putting an EXW order together and want a forwarder shortlist that has actually handled our pallets, the shop behind this post is CHX Precision Metal in Shajing, Shenzhen.
Top comments (0)