Import & Commercial

The costing chain

These tools follow an import in the order the costs actually land.

It begins with volume, and with the unit mismatch that catches most first-time importers: contracts in m³, invoices in CFT, mill quotes in board feet. The volume converter and pricing converter exist because a decimal error there compounds through every downstream figure.

Then the container. Timber almost never fills a container by volume and weight simultaneously — dense hardwood hits the weight limit with the box half empty, light softwood cubes out with tonnes of capacity unused. The container optimiser and volumetric weight checker tell you which of the two is binding before you book.

Then landed cost via the import cost calculator, and finally what survives conversion: yield, waste margin and NHLA grading. A quotation built on nominal volume rather than recovered volume loses money quietly and consistently.