Shipping question - DIY with no furniture

[Surf Monkey]

Hi all,

We are moving to NZ in approx 3 months time. We haven't got any furniture to ship, so we're hoping to not have to use an expensive packing company. However, we do have a lot of stuff including...

• 3 bikes
• 3 surf boards
• loads of books
• a large stereo
• some large framed pictures
• climbing equipment
• power tools

What do you think the best way of getting all that stuff over would be? Shipping some of the larger items (bikes, pictures) that don't fit in tea chests seems to be very expensive.

Has anyone had any experience of shipping half a container load (we're probably under this volume) or a less than container load (and doing it yourself)? How much did it cost? Are there security issues associated with this?

We're hoping to spend a month in Indonesia on the way over to NZ to shipping by sea isn't a problem, however this means that we can't much as excess baggage on the fights (probably just the surf boards as we'll be wanting them in Indo).

Any advice would be very gratefully received.
Thanks.

[tianiax]

I know people that have shipped small amount of stuff over in a shared container, think they used crown. They have offices in UK and NZ. Would recommend a trip to ikea to buy some furniture before you come over thou, its pretty expensive for not very good quality here & not a huge selection.

[ralf-nz]

Would recommend a trip to ikea to buy some furniture before you come over thou, its pretty expensive for not very good quality here & not a huge selection.

This would certainly depend on the style and wood you like. E.g. Rimu is IMHO good value for money with a decent quality.
You won't get anything like that at IKEA.

[dwhite468]

Hi,

I have almost exactly the same question as you, got 4 bikes, 2 pairs of skis, some kitchen stuff and a whole load of tools. Have you managed to sort out what you are doing yet? I would be very intrested to know if you have.

Cheers

David

[Surf Monkey]

Hi David

We realised that we had two options - pack it ourselves and get it sent by one of the excess baggage companies or have a shipping company pack it for us and send it by Groupage (googling "Excess Baggage" and "Groupage" will get you loads of information on these options.)

I estimated we had approx 120 cubic foot of stuff. Calling around the various companies that I'd found, it turned out that bizarrely it would be cheaper to go by Groupage (and thus have our stuff packed for us) than use one of the excess baggage companies.

We ended up going with Pickfords (£650 for 120 cu ft, door to door). John Mason were a close second. The Pickfords guys came last week and packed everything in a couple of hours (28 boxes of it) - they were brilliant.

On the reccommendation of people here I insured our stuf through Letton Percival - 1.25% of value rather than the 3.5% that Pickfords was offering - that saved us a couple of hundred quid!

Fingers crossed all 28 boxes arrive at the same time on the other side of the world!

Hope this info is useful!
Anna