Shipping a household from Europe.

Decide the volume before you decide anything else

The first decision is not which shipper but how much. Three options exist and the price gap between them is large. A groupage or part-container shipment, where your goods share a container with other consignments, suits a family moving personal effects, kitchen equipment, books, art and a few pieces of furniture, and it is the option most of our clients should take and fewer than half do. A twenty-foot container takes roughly a small apartment. A forty-foot container takes a family house and is what people book when they cannot face the sorting, which is an expensive way to avoid a weekend of decisions.

The discipline that saves most money is applied before a box is packed. Walk the European house and mark every item in one of four categories: things that will genuinely be better here than anything you could buy locally, things with irreplaceable personal value, things that will be destroyed by heat and humidity, and things you are shipping because you own them. The last category is usually a third of the volume, and it is almost always cheaper to sell it in Europe and buy the Thai equivalent than to move it eleven thousand kilometres and store it in a climate that will attack it.

Routes, transit times and the real calendar

Sea freight from the main northern European ports, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Felixstowe and Southampton, and from Genoa, Barcelona and Valencia in the south, runs to Laem Chabang, Thailand's deep-water port south-east of Bangkok. Port-to-port transit is commonly four to six weeks depending on the service and transhipments, and that is the number shippers quote. The number that matters to you is door to door, which adds collection and packing in Europe, consolidation and sailing schedules, the wait for a vessel, discharge, customs clearance at Laem Chabang, inland transport and delivery. Six to twelve weeks door to door is a realistic planning assumption, and the tail of that range is not unusual.

Plan the calendar backwards from that. If the container leaves the day you fly, you will live for two to three months without your things, which means the family arrives into an unfurnished or short-let property and buys or rents a basic kit on arrival. Most families we help do exactly that deliberately: they ship, then take a serviced apartment or a furnished short lease for the first two or three months while they look for the real house, and take delivery into the permanent address once they have it. Shipping into storage here while you search adds cost and handling. Air freight for a small urgent consignment of essentials and documents is worth the money and is what we recommend for anything the first month depends on.

Customs, relief and the paperwork that decides it

Thailand offers relief from import duty on used household effects in defined circumstances, and the circumstances are the whole game. Broadly, the relief is aimed at people taking up residence in Thailand with an appropriate non-immigrant visa status, and it is conditioned on the goods being used personal and household effects rather than new or commercial quantities, on the shipment arriving within a defined window relative to your arrival in the country, and generally on it being a single shipment rather than a series. Where the conditions are not met, duty and value added tax are assessed on the goods, which can be a very substantial and entirely avoidable bill.

Three practical rules follow. First, get your visa status correct before the container sails, not after it arrives, because the relief attaches to your status at the point of importation. Second, prepare a detailed and accurate packing inventory with values, because Thai customs will work from it and a vague list invites inspection, delay and reassessment. Third, use a shipper with a real Thai customs brokerage arm and a track record with household goods into Laem Chabang, not simply a good European name, because clearance is where the money and the delay live.

Some categories are restricted or prohibited outright and must be checked before packing rather than discovered at the port. Firearms and ammunition, certain drones and radio equipment, some plant and animal material, and antiques and Buddha images all carry their own controls, and Buddha images are subject to export controls in the other direction that catch departing residents. Alcohol and tobacco in a household shipment are treated as dutiable goods, not effects. Motor vehicles are technically importable and are almost never worth it: Thai duty and excise on imported vehicles are high enough that shipping the European car is one of the few genuinely bad decisions in this article.

What to bring

• Documents: birth, marriage and academic certificates, apostilled and translated where you will need them for schools and immigration
• Prescription medication for the transition period, in original packaging with a doctor's letter, and a written record of prescriptions
• Good kitchen knives, a proper coffee setup, and any specialist cooking equipment you are attached to
• Clothing and shoes in larger European sizes, which are difficult to buy well in Thailand
• Children's books in your own language, which are expensive and thinly stocked here
• Sports equipment that is specialist or fitted, from bicycles to golf clubs to ski boots if you will still use them
• Art and personal pieces you would grieve, packed properly, and insured for the sea
• Any European electrical item you cannot replace, accepting that plugs will need adapting

What to leave, sell or store

Leave heavy European furniture. It is expensive to ship, it looks wrong in a Thai interior built for air and light, solid timber can behave badly in the humidity swing, and Thailand's own furniture industry is excellent and inexpensive, with teak, rattan and a serious made-to-measure trade that will build to your drawing at a price that would be a bargain in Europe. Leave large white goods: they are heavy, they are available here with local warranty and service, and a European appliance that fails in Bangkok is an ornament. Leave anything upholstered you are not attached to, because Thai humidity, mould and insects treat fabric and leather harshly and a five-year-old European sofa will not thank you.

Think hard about pianos, cellos, wine collections, leather-bound books, photographic archives and anything else with a strong opinion about humidity. All can live here, and all need dehumidification, air conditioning discipline and sometimes specialist storage, which is a permanent running cost rather than a one-off decision. On electricals, Thailand runs at two hundred and twenty volts and fifty hertz, so continental European appliances work on voltage; British three-pin plugs do not fit Thai sockets and everything will need adapting or rewiring. Anything from a country running on a hundred and ten volts should be left behind entirely.

Pets, cars and the awkward categories

Pets are movable and the process is procedural rather than difficult: an import permit from the Thai Department of Livestock Development, a government-endorsed health certificate from the country of origin, rabies vaccination and titre testing within the required windows, microchipping, and an approved airline and route. The lead time is the constraint, and it runs to months rather than weeks because the vaccination and testing intervals cannot be compressed. Start with the Department of Livestock Development requirements and work backwards, and note which airlines carry animals on which routes, because it narrows the options considerably.

Cars, as above, should stay in Europe. New goods in commercial quantities within a household shipment will be treated as imports and taxed accordingly, so resist buying the new sofa in Europe and slipping it in. And if you are keeping a European property, decide what stays there before you pack: the most common regret we hear is not from families who shipped too little but from families who emptied a European house they later wished they had kept furnished.

The sequence that works

The order we recommend is consistent. Settle the visa route first, because customs relief and much else depends on it. Get three quotations from movers with genuine Thailand experience and compare door to door, not port to port, with the customs brokerage arrangements stated explicitly in writing. Sort ruthlessly and sell in Europe, where your things are worth more than they will be here. Air freight a small essentials consignment. Sail the container to arrive shortly after you do, not before. Take a furnished short let for the first two or three months. Then find the permanent house with the benefit of having lived here. Families who follow that sequence unpack once. Families who improvise it pay for storage twice.

Customs relief conditions, prohibited goods lists and pet import requirements change and are applied at the discretion of the clearing officer. Verify household effects relief and prohibited items with the Thai Customs Department, verify animal import requirements with the Department of Livestock Development, and confirm your visa status will be in place before the shipment sails.

This briefing is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Thai rules change frequently and individual cases differ. Verify current requirements with the relevant authorities, including the Immigration Bureau, the Board of Investment, the Land Department, the Department of Business Development and the Revenue Department, and take advice on your own facts before acting.