First shipment
If this is your first import from Norway
Most exporters answer a first-time buyer with a price and then go quiet when the questions start. The questions are the job. This page sets out what has to exist on your side before a container can move, what we can carry for you, and what genuinely cannot be worked around.
What has to be yours
Four things, and only one of them is ours
01
An import licence or registration
Held by you, in your own company name, valid for the product and the destination. Every market on our lanes requires one, and the name on it has to match the consignee on the documents.
02
Somewhere cold to put it
Own cold store or a contracted one, at the temperature the product needs rather than the one the facility usually runs. Frozen salmon in a chilled store is a total loss discovered weeks later.
03
A way to pay that a supplier accepts
For a first trade that usually means advance payment or a confirmed letter of credit. Open account comes after a payment history exists, not before it, and no amount of negotiation shortens that.
04
Volume that fills a sensible shipment
One pallet by air or one container by sea. Below that the freight per kilo rises faster than any price negotiation can recover, and we would rather say so than quote it.
What we carry
- Finding suppliers whose approval and certificates we have already checked
- Turning what you need into a specification a supplier can price
- Assembling the document set before the goods move
- Booking the freight and reading the temperature log on arrival
- Registering and pursuing a claim against the lot and the supplier
What cannot be worked around
An import licence cannot be borrowed and a health certificate cannot be issued after the goods have shipped. If either is missing, the honest answer is that the consignment does not move yet — and a supplier who tells you otherwise is describing a problem you will meet at the border rather than in the offer.
Two ways in
You hold the licence
You are the importer of record. We source, verify, document and ship to your Incoterm, and the sale contract is between you and the named supplier.
You do not hold the licence yet
We look for an importer of record in your market who can clear the goods and release them to you. It costs more per kilo and it is slower, and it is the difference between a first shipment and no shipment.
Start with what you have
You do not need every answer to open a request. Tell us the product, the destination and roughly the volume, and an agent works through the rest with you before anything is sent to a supplier.