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Removals and Shipping from the UK to South Africa

By The Expat Club · Updated October 2026

UK removal firms' published prices in October 2026 start at about £1,300 to £2,400 for a shared container load from a one-bedroom home, about £3,400 to £4,900 for a full 20ft container, depending on the city, and about £6,400 to £8,000 for a 40ft container, with insurance and any South African duties on top. Door to door, a full container takes about 4 to 9 weeks and a shared load longer. Household goods you already own can usually enter free of customs duty and VAT under rebate item 407.06 when you change your residence to South Africa. The safest order is for you to land first and the container to follow.

Our main guide to shipping your belongings to South Africa covers the choice between sea and air freight and between shared and full containers, and the South African customs paperwork whichever country you are leaving. Here we stay with a move from Britain: what UK removal firms charge in pounds, where the ships leave from, which of your things are worth the space, and how to line the shipment up with your visa. We checked UK removers' published prices and the official South African rules in October 2026.

What a UK removal to South Africa costs in pounds

These are the starting prices two UK removal firms published for door-to-door moves in October 2026. Where the two firms differ, each cell runs from the lower price to the higher:

The table shows Cape Town and Johannesburg. The same two firms' 20ft starting prices to Durban, Gqeberha and Pretoria ran from £3,695 to £4,897. Two other UK firms publish guide ranges rather than starting prices, and they run higher: £3,500 to £5,000 and £5,200 to £7,800 for a 20ft container, and £6,000 to £9,000 and £7,000 to £11,500 for a 40ft. One of them prices a shared load at £170 to £240 per cubic metre. The shared and full container prices in the table sit inside the ranges our calculator uses, which you will find in pounds further down this page. Three of these four guide ranges run past the calculator's top end, though, so plan around a surveyed quote.

• They are starting prices. Every firm says the real figure depends on a survey of what you own.
• What is normally included. The firms whose tables we used describe them as door to door: export packing, collection from your home, sea freight, customs clearance in South Africa and delivery.
• What is normally extra. Marine insurance, at 2% to 5% of the value you declare at those firms; South African duties, taxes and any quarantine fees; storage beyond the usual clearance period, or while you wait for a visa or a lease, charged by the week or month; and the cost of a customs examination if your container is picked for one.
• VAT. None of the price pages we checked says whether VAT is included, so ask each firm.
• Johannesburg and Pretoria usually cost more than Cape Town. The haul inland from the port adds to the bill: one firm charges £635 more for a 20ft container to Johannesburg than to Cape Town.

Get at least three surveys, in person or by video, ask each firm for the measured volume in writing and compare those volumes as well as the prices. A quote that looks cheap because it measured less than the others can grow on packing day.

What pushes a quote up or down

Volume drives most of the price. Removers quote household goods by the cubic metre (or by the cubic foot, on older price lists), so the survey that measures what you own matters more than anything else in the quote.

• Packing. A full packing service by the removal crew costs more than packing yourself, but goods you packed yourself may not be fully covered by the insurance if they break. Ask how each option affects your cover.
• Access at both ends. A top-floor flat with no lift, a narrow street that needs a smaller shuttle vehicle, or a parking suspension from the council can all add to the UK side. In South Africa, a secure complex with gate rules and booked delivery slots can do the same.
• Season. The British summer, when families move between school years, and the run-up to Christmas are the busiest times to ship. Book early for those, or move at a quieter time if your dates are flexible.

UK ports and sea time to Cape Town and Durban

The container leaves from one of the deep-sea ports in the south and east of England. Felixstowe and Southampton are the two that UK removers name, and which one your goods use depends on the shipping line's service rather than where you live: the remover packs at your home and takes the container to the port by road.

UK removers mainly ship household goods to three South African ports: Cape Town, Durban and Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth). Johannesburg and Pretoria are inland, so goods for Gauteng land at Durban and go on by rail or road. Here is one UK remover's published sailing schedule, dated 16 October 2026:

Cape Town is the nearest of the three on the map, yet it was the slowest arrival on that schedule, so do not assume a Cape Town move is the quick one. Allow time at both ends as well: packing and the drive to the port before sailing, then customs clearance and delivery after. Firms quote about 4 to 9 weeks door to door for a full container, and on the schedule above a Cape Town move sits at the longer end because of its 34 to 40 days at sea. A shared container usually takes about 2 to 4 weeks longer, because it waits at the UK end until enough loads are booked to fill it.

Air freight takes from about 3 days to 2 weeks, depending on the service, but at published guide prices of about £800 to £1,200 for a single cubic metre, most people keep it for the few things they need straight away.

What to ship and what to sell

A UK household moves to South Africa more easily than most, because the electrics match: South Africa runs on 230V at 50Hz, like the UK. Your appliances will work, but the plugs will not. South Africa uses type M (the large round-pin plug) and type N sockets, with type C for small two-pin items, so you will need adaptors or new plugs fitted. Heavy appliances such as washing machines and fridges will run too, but weigh their share of the container against buying new once you arrive.

Televisions are less clear-cut. South Africa chose DVB-T2 for digital terrestrial TV, the same standard UK Freeview HD uses, so a Freeview HD set has the right kind of tuner while an older standard Freeview set does not. We could not confirm that every UK set works fully with South African channels, and plenty of households now watch through streaming apps on a smart TV, so judge a big set on its space in the container as much as on its tuner.

A simple test: if an item would cost less to buy again in South Africa than its share of your quote, sell it before you go. Good furniture, art, tools, books and things that cannot be replaced usually earn their space. Cheap, bulky items rarely do.

Your car

South Africa also drives on the left, so a British right-hand-drive car suits its roads, but that does not mean you can bring it in. Used vehicles can only be imported with an import permit from ITAC (the International Trade Administration Commission) and a letter of authority from the NRCS (the National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications), and ITAC only considers an immigrant's application once permanent residence has been granted. Until then, ITAC's guidelines say to approach SARS for temporary clearance, which is not the same as a permanent import. On a work, retirement or other temporary visa, you will almost always do better selling the car in the UK and buying in South Africa. Our guide to importing a car to South Africa sets out who qualifies and what the duty and VAT add up to.

Things to check before they go in the container

Some belongings need permits or careful declaring, and a few are better left behind. Firearms need permits at both ends, so start on those well before packing day. Alcohol and tobacco fall outside the rebate, and liquor needs its own import paperwork, so a wine collection brings duty and admin with it. South Africa restricts soil and plant matter at the border. Declare plants, seeds and anything made from plant or animal material, including wooden carvings and ornaments, and clean the soil off garden tools, bikes, walking boots and camping kit. Wooden crates or pallets used for packing must carry the ISPM 15 treatment mark. Leave out anything flammable, such as paint, gas bottles and fuel in garden machinery, and drain lawnmowers before they are packed. If you are unsure about an item, ask your remover before it goes on the inventory.

Pets do not travel with your household goods: they fly separately, under their own import permit, and our guide to relocating pets to South Africa covers the UK route.

Practical tip: Carry your important papers in your hand luggage, not in the container: passports, your visa, birth and marriage certificates, police clearances, school records and the inventory itself. If any of them need an apostille, our guide to documents, apostilles and police clearance explains how to get it done in the UK before you leave.

Customs, the rebate and your visa timing

South Africa lets you bring in household goods you already own without customs duty or VAT when you move there. The rule is rebate item 407.06 in Schedule 4 to the Customs and Excise Act, which covers household furniture, other household effects and the equipment of your trade or profession that belong to you and your family, imported for your own use when you change your residence to South Africa. It excludes cars, alcohol and tobacco, and if you sell or dispose of the goods within six months of their entry, the duty becomes payable.

Your remover's clearing agent files the customs entry, but the paperwork comes from you: form DA 304, the declaration on form P.1.160, a full inventory of the container, your passport and the visa or permit for your new residence. On the DA 304 you declare that you owned the goods before you left for South Africa, so anything bought after you leave does not qualify. New items bought before you go can still count if the quantities are reasonable, so keep the receipts.

Who the rebate covers

The wording plainly covers people taking up permanent residence, and South Africans coming home after at least six months abroad. It is less clear for temporary visas. SARS does not say whether a work visa, a remote work visa or a retired person's visa counts as a change of residence. Customs guides from the removals trade say work visa holders have been accepted, and that tourist and visitor visas are not, even while a residence application is pending. The remote work visa is issued as a type of visitor's visa, so that caution may well apply to it. The DA 304 does let you declare a permanent or a temporary change of residence, but that is no promise the rebate will be granted. On a remote work or retired person's visa, ask your remover's clearing agent, and SARS if you need to, before you book, and budget for the chance that duty applies.

If you are an intending immigrant and your permit has not been issued by the time the goods land, SARS policy says a provisional payment to cover the duty may be accepted until you meet the rebate's conditions. That is a payment held against the duty, not a waiver, so it ties up money for a while.

Land first, then the goods

Guidance from South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation says household goods should preferably arrive after their owner, and that goods arriving first are kept in storage at the owner's cost. Removers commonly ask you to be in South Africa at least 10 days before the container docks, so you can sign for clearance with the entry stamp already in your passport. Those 10 days are a working rule from the trade rather than a legal limit, but they are worth keeping to.

So book the container once your visa is approved, or once you are close enough to a decision to fix a flight date. Visa decisions for UK applicants can take months, and our guide to South African visa processing times shows how long each type is taking. One way to line it up: book the collection for a week or two before you fly, so the container sails just behind you, and stay in a furnished rental while it is at sea. Our guide to your first 30 and 90 days in South Africa covers what to sort out in that stretch.

The UK end

Leaving the UK is simpler. HMRC guidance says personal goods for your own use do not normally need a formal export declaration, and GOV.UK says you do not need an EORI number to move goods that are for personal use and not controlled. When a removals firm ships your household, it usually takes care of the export paperwork as part of the service. Controlled goods are the exception: guns, for example, need a full export declaration, so tell your remover about them at the first survey.

The whole move in pounds

Shipping is only one line of a move. Our cost to move calculator adds up the rest in rand, and here are its 2026 ranges in pounds at R21.92 to the pound (the Bank of England spot rate on 20 October 2026), rounded:

Visa fees are not in this table, because UK applicants pay them in pounds through VFS Global. Our guide to moving to South Africa from the UK has the current fee table for each visa, alongside the UK tax steps when you leave. The calculator also adds a rental deposit and three months of living costs, which for most households cost more than the shipping itself.

These pound figures use a wholesale rate, which ran from about R21.57 to R22.05 to the pound between September and October 2026, and the rate you get when you change money is usually a little worse. A quote in pounds from a UK remover, paid in the UK, avoids that question for the shipping itself.

If Cape Town is where the container is heading, our guide to moving to Cape Town from the UK converts one-bedroom rents in each area into pounds.

Frequently asked questions

Sources, checked 23 October 2026

Removal prices, inclusions and sailing times come from the published price lists and schedules of four UK removal firms, checked on 23 October 2026; we have not named them. The rules come from these sources:

• Schedule No. 4 to the Customs and Excise Act (SARS): the wording of rebate item 407.06, what it excludes, the six-month disposal rule and the DA 304 and P.1.160 requirement.
• I want to import my personal effects and/or household goods: what do I require? (SARS): entry without customs duty or VAT under item 407.06, and the documents to supply.
• Forms DA 304, DA 304A and P.1.160 (SARS): the declaration that the goods were owned before departure, the inventory requirement and the items to declare.
• SC-CF-55 Goods Declaration External Policy (SARS): provisional payments for intending immigrants who do not yet hold a residence permit.
• Arrival in South Africa (SARS): prohibited and restricted goods, including firearms, plants and animal products.
• Importing household effects (Department of International Relations and Cooperation): that household goods should preferably arrive after their owner, or be stored at the owner's cost.
• Travellers' guide (Department of Agriculture): declaring plants, animal products, soil and growth medium at the border.
• Regulation of wood packaging material in international trade (SARS): that wooden packaging must meet ISPM 15.
• Guidelines for the importation of used or second-hand vehicles (International Trade Administration Commission): who may import a used car, the permanent residence condition and the NRCS letter of authority.
• Check how to declare personal goods you bring into or take out of the UK (HM Revenue & Customs): that personal goods do not normally need a formal declaration, and that restricted goods such as guns do.
• Get an EORI number (GOV.UK): that goods for personal use that are not controlled do not need an EORI number.
• DVB-T2 and Freeview HD (Ofcom): which UK televisions and set-top boxes can receive DVB-T2.
• Digital migration to be completed by 2013 (SAnews): South Africa's adoption of the DVB-T2 standard.
• Spot exchange rate, rand into sterling (XUDLZRS) (Bank of England): the R21.92 rate on 20 October 2026 and the range since September.

Educational information only, not immigration, tax, legal or financial advice: confirm current rules and consult a qualified professional.