Your home, delivered to your new country.

An international move is priced on the volume you are actually shipping, measured in cubic metres, on the route between your two cities, and on whether you choose sea or air freight, which is why we do not publish a price list and will not guess at a figure before a survey has seen what you own. Send us your route and a rough date, and a coordinator comes back with a real, itemised figure — not a range.

Sea and air freight run on very different timelines, and the honest transit window depends on the exact corridor, the shipping line's schedule and the season you are moving in, which is why every corridor guide above publishes its own real figure rather than one number standing in for every route. See the full moving process for what happens between booking and delivery.

Every international shipment we move travels under all-risk transit insurance arranged on the replacement value you declare before it leaves your home, so a breakage or a loss in transit is covered against that figure rather than left for you to argue about after the fact. Cover is confirmed in writing on your quote before anything is packed.

A surveyor goes through the house — in person or over video — and lists what is actually travelling, room by room, so the volume your quote is priced on is a measurement rather than a guess over the phone, and there is no charge for it and nothing owed if you decide not to go ahead. What it produces is your inventory — the list your quote is priced against, and the one a claim is settled against — so the replacement values you put on it are also what your cover is arranged on.

Somebody has to be there at both ends, and it does not have to be you: packing needs a person who can tell the crew what travels and what stays and answer for the cupboard nobody mentioned at the survey, and delivery needs somebody to say which room each carton belongs in. A spouse, a parent or a friend acting for you is fine — tell your coordinator in advance who it will be. If you have already flown out before packing day, say so at the survey rather than on the morning.

Yes, at either end, and the thing to get right is the period rather than the fact of it: a storage window is written into your quote when we know about it at the survey, and time that runs past that written period is charged separately, which is why it sits in the exclusions above. Storage at a port while a shipment clears customs is a different charge with a different owner: the terminal sets both that window and its rate. The longer version of that exclusions list sets out both.

Two separate lists decide that, and only one of them is the same on every route: dangerous goods — flammable liquids, gas cylinders, aerosols, paint and anything perishable — stay out of a household shipment whichever way it travels, and the destination country's own prohibited and restricted lists change with the country. Prohibited means refused entry outright; restricted means released only with the approval of the authority that governs it. Name anything you are unsure of at the survey rather than at the port — an undeclared restricted item holds up the whole shipment and not only itself.

Both, and each is booked on its own rather than as a line on the household one: a vehicle and an animal carry their own paperwork, their own approvals and their own timetable, so each is quoted and cleared separately from the household rather than folded into the volume a surveyor measures. A pet needs its own licences and, in some destinations, a quarantine booking. Name them at the survey rather than at the port — a licence or an approval started late is what leaves an animal or a car arriving after the household does.