Vietnam to France: The Quote Promises 35 Days in Transit. Budget for 55

The transit time promised on a quote for importing shrimp from Vietnam to France almost always lands around 30 to 40 days by sea. That's the figure most generalist freight forwarders put on the page, calculated port to port, with no allowance for consolidation at Cat Lai, the SIVEP sanitary inspection at the port of entry, or the final mile to your cold store. We've been sourcing directly from Mekong Delta processing plants for several years now, and the real door-to-door lead time almost always falls between 50 and 58 days.

That gap isn't a one-off glitch. It's structural, and it will repeat container after container unless you build it into your plan from day one. Understanding where those twenty days go has a direct effect on your purchasing schedule and your cash position.

Where does the 30 to 40 day figure on the quote come from?

The number on most quotes isn't made up. According to docshipper.fr, a full container load (20-foot FCL) from Vietnam to France carries a transit time of 30 to 45 days, with freight priced between €4,800 and €5,200. Forwarder fr.sino-shipping.com gives near-identical figures: 30 to 45 days for a 20-foot FCL at €4,800-5,200, against €6,900-7,500 for a 40-foot FCL. Those rates date from August 2024 and serve as a baseline, not a ceiling, once seasonal surcharges are applied.

That figure covers one leg of the journey and one only: the sea crossing itself, from the port of loading (Cat Lai or Haiphong) to the European port of destination. None of those quotes include factory-to-port haulage or customs clearance on arrival.

Why do forwarders quote an optimistic lead time?

A generalist forwarder is selling transport, not a guarantee that goods hit your shelf. They quote the container ship's sailing time because that's the variable they control best. Everything else, production, consolidation, sanitary formalities, depends on parties they don't directly steer: the Vietnamese processing plant, French customs, the border inspection post. So the quote isn't dishonest, it's simply incomplete for a regulated food product like frozen shrimp.

Between the Mekong plant and the quay at Cat Lai: the days nobody counts

Several stages stack up before the sea transit clock even starts. Production at the plant (grading, glazing, IQF packing) typically takes one to two weeks depending on order volume and raw material availability. Then comes domestic haulage to the port, followed by consolidation if your volume doesn't fill a full container.

An LCL (groupage) shipment adds time mechanically. Sino-shipping prices LCL at €250 to €350 per cubic metre, with a stated transit time of 30 to 45 days, but that range assumes your consignment isn't sitting around waiting for the container to fill up. On a perishable product like frozen shrimp, that wait at the consolidation warehouse is the first place the calendar slips, and nothing in the quote flags it explicitly.

How long does consolidation take before loading?

In practice, budget an extra five to ten working days for standard consolidation, against zero if you load a dedicated full container. It's one of the arguments that pushes many buyers to switch to FCL as soon as monthly volume passes ten tonnes, even at a slightly higher unit cost. The principle is the one described in a video on buying live fish from overseas: forwarders consolidate several shipments from different breeders before sending them out in one go, which cuts the cost per package but stretches the wait before actual departure. The wait-and-consolidate mechanism is identical for frozen shrimp in a reefer container, even if the product and the scale are worlds apart.

SIVEP checks at the port of entry: the real bottleneck

Once the reefer container is discharged at Le Havre, Antwerp or Rotterdam, it isn't automatically released to your warehouse. Products of animal origin imported from a third country go through a border control post (SIVEP in France), which performs a systematic documentary check, supplemented, at the frequency set by regulation, by an identity check and, where applicable, a physical check with sampling.

That check adds 24 to 72 hours in the most common scenario, but it can run considerably longer if a sample triggers a lab analysis, or if the paperwork (health certificate, EUR.1 certificate of origin to claim the preferential EVFTA rate) contains a non-conformity. The customs duty rate for Vietnamese shrimp under EVFTA has been stepping down towards 0% across several tariff categories since the agreement came into force, but only if the EUR.1 certificate is correctly completed. An error on that document won't hold up the sanitary check, but it does cost you the preferential rate and can delay customs release while the file is corrected.

When is a shrimp container genuinely held up at inspection?

Extended holds are the exception rather than the rule with an established, audited processing plant (BRC, IFS, ASC). They become more common with a new supplier, a new product code, or after a sector-wide food safety alert has temporarily tightened inspection frequency on a product category. All the more reason to nail down the supplier relationship before committing to a tight delivery schedule with a HORECA or retail customer.

The transit quote covers the sea leg and nothing else: production, consolidation and customs all have to be negotiated and planned separately.

The real door-to-door schedule, and what it costs in cash flow

Add up every stage and the real schedule diverges sharply from the number on the transport quote. The table below breaks the gap down line by line for a standard 20-foot FCL import from Cat Lai to Le Havre.

Every week of slippage between the quote and reality ties up the capital committed to the goods: freight paid, stock not yet sold. On a 20-foot FCL costing between €4,800 and €7,500 in freight depending on the format, plus the value of the cargo itself, a three-week slip hits your working capital directly, especially if you're running multiple just-in-time orders for catering contracts or retail.

"A transit quote states a sea leg, not a delivery date. I never sign a volume commitment with a customer until I've built the SIVEP margin into the schedule."

EMG Seafood, August 2026

How to protect your schedule despite the gap

The first concrete step is to think in shelf-ready dates, not sailing dates. If your end customer expects the goods on a fixed date, work backwards from that date and always build in a five to seven working day buffer for customs, even with a regular supplier. That's exactly the calculation we run before committing to a volume with a just-in-time HORECA buyer.

The second is to favour FCL as soon as volume allows, to remove the consolidation wait, which remains the least predictable variable upstream. The choice of Incoterm feeds directly into the same equation: a badly negotiated DDP hands the supplier responsibility for the customs timeline without giving you any real visibility on progress, whereas a FOB run by your own forwarder keeps every stage in your hands.

The operational verdict is simple: worth doing for any buyer who budgets 55 days door to door rather than 35. Avoid it if your commercial model rests on fixed-date commitments with no safety margin, or if you're starting out with a plant that hasn't been audited yet. Those two situations combined with a tightened SIVEP check can turn a three-day delay into a stockout at your customer's end.

To go further on structuring the supplier schedule, the checklist on ordering a container of shrimp from Vietnam covers production and cash flow lead times upstream of transport, and the FOB, CIF or DDP comparison spells out who carries responsibility for each leg under each Incoterm.

Trade flow data between Vietnam and the European Union, tracked notably through Eurostat Comext, confirms a steady rise in imported shrimp volumes since EVFTA came into force, which makes mastering the customs timeline all the more strategic for absorbing seasonal peaks. Market data consolidated by EUMOFA lets you cross-check prices by segment before negotiating a DDP with a supplier.