Shipping from UAE to Egypt

Egyptian import formalities

ACID and the Nafeza single window

ACID is the Advance Cargo Information Declaration number that an Egyptian importer registers on the Nafeza platform, and it must exist before the cargo leaves the port of loading. Nafeza is the national single window for foreign trade operated for the Egyptian Customs Authority, and it is where the import file lives from that moment on.

The sequence on this lane is fixed. The Egyptian consignee opens the ACID request on Nafeza against our shipper details, receives the ACID number, and sends it to us. We print that number on the commercial invoice, the packing list and the bill of lading before the container is loaded at Jebel Ali. A shipment that sails without a registered ACID cannot be cleared in Egypt.

Mismatch is the second failure mode, and it is the expensive one. Where the exporter name, the commodity description, the quantity or the value on the shipping documents differs from what the consignee entered on Nafeza, Egyptian customs holds the entry until the file is corrected. The container stays on the terminal while that happens and demurrage and storage run against the consignee. We reconcile the ACID record against the draft documents before the bill of lading is released.

Document transmission

CargoX and the exporter's side of Nafeza

CargoX is the electronic document transfer platform that Egypt requires exporters to use for sending original trade documents into the Egyptian importer's Nafeza account. We hold the exporter account and transmit from Jebel Ali.

What goes across is the commercial invoice, the packing list, the certificate of origin and the bill of lading, each keyed to the consignee's ACID number. The importer receives them inside Nafeza and confirms them before arrival, and that confirmation is what puts the entry into processing. Paper originals still travel for the bank and for the delivery order, but the customs file is the electronic one.

For re-export cargo out of the UAE the certificate of origin names the country of manufacture and the invoice names the manufacturer, and Egyptian customs reads the two together. Our customs clearance desk prepares that pairing before the documents are uploaded.

Approved factories

GOEIC registration for regulated consumer goods

The General Organization for Export and Import Control, GOEIC, keeps a register of foreign factories whose products are admitted into Egypt, and regulated consumer goods are refused entry when the producing factory is not on that register. This is what catches UAE traders shipping third-country brands into Egypt.

Registration belongs to the manufacturer or the brand owner. It is not something a forwarder or an importer applies for on the factory's behalf. We check the register against the manufacturer named on the invoice before the booking is placed, because the check costs nothing and a refused entry costs the freight, the demurrage and the return leg.

Gateways

Alexandria, Damietta, Port Said and Ain Sokhna

Egypt's working sea gateways on this lane behave differently, and the right one follows where the goods are consumed. Alexandria, with its El Dekheila extension, is the general cargo and container port serving Cairo and the Delta. Damietta handles containers and bulk on the eastern Delta and serves the food and grain trades. Port Said East sits at the Mediterranean mouth of the Suez Canal and works as a container hub, which makes it the quickest relay for boxes that tranship rather than sail direct.

Ain Sokhna sits on the Gulf of Suez, south of the canal, and it is the natural discharge for cargo coming up the Red Sea from Jebel Ali because the vessel reaches it without a canal transit. It also puts the cargo alongside the Sokhna industrial zone and on the road to Upper Egypt.

Air freight into Cairo International Airport carries the urgent industrial spares, instruments and temperature-controlled consignments. Overland, trailers leave Jebel Ali, cross Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea coast, take the ferry to the Egyptian side and continue by road to Cairo and the Delta. Sea, air and land are quoted from the same enquiry.

Consolidation

One container out of several Gulf and Asian suppliers

Egyptian buyers running several suppliers at once ship one container instead of several part loads, and the consolidation happens at our Jebel Ali warehouse. Goods arrive there from UAE sellers, from Gulf sellers, and from Asian shipments already landed in Dubai.

We receive against each supplier's invoice, tally and re-mark the cartons under the single Egyptian consignee, cross-stuff where the goods arrived in a shared box, and load one container under one bill of lading carrying one ACID number. The buyer in Cairo or Alexandria then clears one entry instead of chasing several. Volumes below a full container move as LCL on the same routing and against the same document set.

Cargo on this lane

What we carry from the UAE into Egypt

This is commercial and industrial traffic: industrial equipment and production line components, electrical and instrumentation materials, raw materials and chemicals in commercial packing, packaging and printing consumables, spare parts for plant and fleet, and manufactured goods for the wholesale trade. Heavy and out-of-gauge pieces move as breakbulk with the lift plan agreed before the vessel is fixed.

Midtrans Shipping And Services books full container loads, part loads, project and heavy cargo, and commercial vehicles carried as cargo. Every booking is placed against a commercial invoice and a registered Egyptian consignee.