A forwarding agent or forwarder is an agent who acts on behalf of importers and exporters to organize safe, and economical goods transport. Among their many tasks, the most common are facilitating transport, selecting the most efficient route, taking out insurance policies, choosing the appropriate packaging depending on the cargo and taking care of its storage and/or distribution.

Our Freight service is calculated based on the volume of the goods transported. However, it is strongly influenced by the availability of physical means (transport) on your desired route. By way of example, bringing goods from China is much cheaper than it is to take them there. This is because shipowners are in high demand for bringing cargo from China to Europe, while it is more complicated to find freight to transport back out to China given the existing trade imbalance. Another variable with a strong influence is the oil price at the moment of traveling.

Multimodal transport consists of carrying a single cargo by different modes of transport (air, land, ocean…) using Intermodal Transport Units (ITU) such as containers, semi-trailers or swap bodies (interchangeable containers).

A forwarding agent or forwarder is a transport operator. They act on behalf and in favour of importers and exporters, organising safe, efficient and economical goods transport. In other words, a professional expert at your disposal for the purposes of hiring transport, selecting the most efficient route, taking out insurance policies, choosing the appropriate packaging and taking care of storage where required.
A customs agent is responsible for managing all customs duties and documents required by the tax administration in every country for the traffic of goods between states. Their importance lies in knowing the legal regulations in order to satisfy the tax authorities and avoid last-minute surprises such as tax duties or surcharges.

The main kinds of customs control according to the route and jurisdiction are as follows:

Land customs: Are found at the borders between countries, where they deal with heavy goods transport, private cars and even people who cross on foot in the case of city border points. Their functions are to check that the documentation matches the articles transported.
Air customs: Are located at international airports and deal with the highest flow of human transit. Imported and exported goods arriving at an airport are checked by customs on arrival, and subsequently by customs at the place of their destination
Maritime customs: This kind of customs deals with the vast amount of goods travelling between countries geographically very distant from one another. Here the goods are generally of great weight or size, such as vehicles or industrial machinery. Maritime customs are responsible for verifying the goods entering and leaving, as well as their documentation.
On the other hand, depending on their function, customs controls can be classified as:

Customs at the port of entry: Which deal with goods to be declared for national consumption.
Customs at the point of destination: Receive goods or products sent. At this point the goods are no longer considered as being in transit and become liable for tax.
Border customs: These are customs which neither receive nor issue goods, but which control goods in transit, often when travelling from their country of origin to that of their destination.

Customs control the movement of goods between different states in three steps:

1. Customs declaration: Must be presented to the customs authority in order to identify the goods to be transported and their destination.
2. Goods inspection by the customs agents, to check that they match the declaration.
3. Verification that trade policy norms have been met and amounts due have been paid (import and export duties).