Trade Guide

Who may consign is the first question, and it is not a question the freight forwarder can answer for you. Cuba works through a state import structure, and the party named as consignee on the commercial invoice has to hold the right import permit and be registered on the MLC card that allows it to bring cargo in. If the consignee on the paperwork is not the consignee that holds the permit, the container arrives and cannot be released, and no amount of freight work will shorten that. This is why we ask for the consignee details and the permit reference before we quote, not after the goods are ready.

The commercial invoice is where the customs description has to be right. Cuban customs assesses duties and taxes on the declared value and on the classification of the goods, and it assesses them on what the invoice says. A generic description — "general cargo", "samples", "spare parts" — gives the assessor nothing to classify against, and an assessor with nothing to classify against will open the container. The line items need to match what is physically inside, down to the model and the unit of measure, and they need to state the value per unit and the currency. A mismatch between the invoice and the packing list is one of the most common reasons a container is held for a physical re-inspection, which costs days and puts the free time clock on your account while it happens.

Value is the third element, and it is the one most often treated as a formality. The declared value on the invoice is what the assessment is calculated on, and the invoice has to be consistent with the other documents in the file — the packing list, the bill of lading and the payment record. A value that is materially below what the goods actually cost is not a way to reduce duty; it is a discrepancy that the assessor will find, and it turns a routine clearance into an investigation. Where the parties agree on a different basis for the assessment, that agreement has to be documented and accepted before the container sails, because it is much harder to argue at the port than it is to arrange at origin.

Clearance is not a single event. The container is discharged at Mariel, the entry is prepared and filed, the assessment is made, the duties and taxes are paid, and only then is the release issued. Our own working figure for that sequence, from discharge to release, is five to ten days, and it assumes the paperwork arrived with the container and the consignee responds quickly when something is queried. A query on the entry does not pause the free time — the days keep counting from discharge whether or not the release is ready, which is why the free-time and detention rules on the Mariel port page matter as much as the clearance sequence itself.

The practical sequence is short. Send us the consignee name and permit details. Send us the commercial invoice draft, the packing list and the packing list values, and let us check the description against the cargo before you pay for the goods. We confirm that the file is complete and internally consistent, and we tell you which numbers are still missing. Do this before the container is booked rather than after it is loaded, because the two most expensive corrections in this lane — a consignee that cannot take delivery and a description that does not match the cargo — are both free to fix on paper and expensive to fix at the quay.

The first distinction is between three different kinds of restriction, and mixing them up is what causes a shipment to be held. Some categories need an additional permission on top of the ordinary import permit — a licence, an end-use certificate, or a document from a specific authority — and the permission has to exist before the cargo is loaded. Some categories are refused outright, and there is no documentation that unlocks them. Some categories are simply slow: they are allowed, but the permission takes weeks, so they have to be planned months ahead rather than booked against a sailing. Before we accept a cargo we work out which of the three it is, because the answer changes the lead time by weeks.

Food, agricultural products and anything that enters the food chain are the clearest example of the first kind. A commercial consignment of food or agricultural product needs a health or sanitary authorisation from the Cuban authorities in addition to the import permit, and the authorisation covers the specific product and the specific consignee. It is not a general clearance document that can be reused for the next shipment. The practical implication is that the product list and the paperwork have to be agreed before the goods are manufactured, not after they are finished — a pallet of a different product than the one on the certificate is a container that cannot be released.

Pharmaceutical and medical products sit in the same category with a higher bar, because the authorisation is tied to the specific presentation, the active substance and the dosage, not to a general description of the goods. The importer needs to be entitled to handle them, and the consignment needs to match what the importer is permitted to bring in. We ask for the product registration or the authorisation reference at the quotation stage for this reason, and we treat a consignment of this kind as a document-led booking rather than a space-led one.

Dangerous goods and batteries are the third kind. These are not refused; they are regulated, and the regulation is technical. Lithium batteries move as a separate class with their own test report and packing certificate, and the rules differ again between batteries contained in equipment, batteries packed with equipment, and batteries shipped alone. The document set and the packing have to match the exact configuration, and a mismatch on that specific point is enough to stop the cargo at the terminal in China before it is ever loaded. The full document set and the difference between the three battery configurations are covered in the article linked below.

There is a second layer of restriction that sits on the parties rather than on the goods, and it is the one that catches people out. A cargo can be entirely legal, entirely documented correctly, and still be held after arrival because the port checks the shipper, the consignee and the banking parties against its own screening lists, and the payment chain is part of what it looks at. The payment terms are therefore a compliance question, not only a commercial one. We run that screening before the booking, and the shipping guide covers what we check and how we check it, because a payment structure that is acceptable commercially can still be a problem on this lane.

The way to avoid all of this is to describe the goods properly before you buy them, not after. Send us the product, the quantity, the packaging, the value and the intended use, in whatever detail you have. We will tell you which of the three categories it falls into, what documentation it needs, and how long that documentation takes. Where the answer is that a specific product is refused, you will know it before you have paid for the goods and before you have committed to a supplier — which is the only point at which knowing is worth anything.