Landed cost calculator: from a container from China to your price list

The landed cost of each item is its FOB price in euros, plus its share of freight and insurance, plus the duties charged on its customs value, plus its share of port, broker and inland transport costs, all divided by the units. Customs duty and any anti-dumping duty are both percentages of the same customs value, which in the EU includes freight and insurance up to the border but not what you pay after it. The list price is that cost divided by one minus your target margin, and every customer discount comes off the margin, not the cost.

Try it with your container

With the example figures, a container worth 47,000 USD FOB (40,869.57 € at 1.15) reaches the warehouse at 48,951.87 €, 19.8% above its FOB value in euros, spreading costs by value. Line A-102 carries a test anti-dumping rate of 20%: it goes from 5.65 € FOB to 7.71 € per unit landed, 36.4% more, and 1.22 € of that rise is the anti-dumping alone. Spread by volume instead of value and B-201, the bulkiest line, goes from 123.23 to 127.53 € per unit, 3.5% more, with the same container. With a 30% target margin, discounts of 5, 10 and 15% leave 26.3%, 22.2% and 17.6%.

From FOB to landed cost, step by step

A landed cost is made of two kinds of cost: those that belong to each line (its price, its customs duty, its anti-dumping, its CBAM) and those the whole container shares (freight, insurance, port, broker, inland transport). The first are calculated line by line; the second are spread with a rule. This is what the calculator does:

FOB_€        = quantity × FOB_USD / EURUSD
share        = line value (or weight, or volume) / container total
customs_value = FOB_€ + share × (freight + insurance)
duty         = customs_value × duty %
anti_dumping = customs_value × anti-dumping %
CBAM         = tonnes × € per tonne
landed       = customs_value + duty + anti_dumping + CBAM
               + share × (port + broker + inland)
per_unit     = landed / quantity

Import VAT is left out of the calculation: a taxable person is entitled to deduct the VAT due or paid on the importation of goods, in so far as the goods are used for its taxed transactions (VAT Directive 2006/112/EC, Article 168(e)). If your supplier sells in dollars, the exchange rate weighs as much as the freight: the guide to the metal-indexed price list shows how to keep it inside the price formula.

What the duty is charged on

Customs duty is not charged on the invoice price but on the customs value. The Union Customs Code (Regulation (EU) No 952/2013) defines it in Articles 70 to 72:

• The base is the transaction value: the price actually paid or payable for the goods when sold for export to the EU (Article 70).
• Transport and insurance are added, with the loading and handling charges linked to that transport, up to the place where the goods enter the customs territory of the Union (Article 71(1)(e)). If you buy FOB, ocean freight and insurance are added; if you buy CIF, they are already in the price. The guide to import documents by incoterm covers who pays what under each term.
• Not added: transport after entry into the EU and the import duties themselves (Article 72(a) and (f)). Nothing else may be added beyond what Article 71 lists (Article 71(3)).

The calculator treats port, handling and customs broker as costs after entry, with no duty. How port charges split between before and after entry depends on each invoice: your customs broker can tell you how it works in your case.

Anti-dumping duty uses the same base. The regulations that impose it apply the rate to the “net, free-at-Union-frontier price, before duty” (for example, Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/546 on aluminium extrusions from China, Article 1(2)), and add that, unless otherwise specified, the provisions in force concerning customs duties apply (Article 1(5)). So the calculator adds both percentages on the same value instead of applying one on top of the other (inferred from that wording). If you import copper tube, the guide to anti-dumping on copper tubes from China follows the open case. CBAM is not a customs duty: it is paid per tonne, and the guide to CBAM cost per tonne helps you estimate the figure that goes into the calculator.

Value, weight or volume

Duties always stay with their line, because each product has its own rate. What gets spread is what is shared: freight, insurance, port, broker and inland transport. The rule changes the cost of each item, even though the container costs the same:

• By value. The simplest, and consistent with duties that are also value-based. It undercharges cheap, bulky goods, which take up space and carry little freight.
• By weight. Makes sense when the container fills by weight, as metal does.
• By volume. Makes sense when it fills by space: light, bulky goods.

A practical rule: spread the freight by whatever limited the container. In the example, switching from value to volume barely moves the total (from 48,951.87 to 48,930.32 €, because freight moves to lines with a different duty rate), but it does move each line’s cost per unit.

From landed cost to price list

list            = cost_per_unit / (1 − margin)
customer_price  = list × (1 − discount)
customer_margin = 1 − (1 − margin) / (1 − discount)

Margin on price is not markup on cost: a 30% margin means dividing by 0.70, a 42.9% markup. And the discount comes off the margin: with 30% on the list, a customer with a 15% discount leaves you 17.6%. If you give large discounts, the list’s target margin has to allow for them.

Mistakes that distort the cost

• Charging the duty on FOB. If you buy FOB, freight and insurance up to the border are part of the customs value.
• Putting anti-dumping on top of the duty-paid value. Both go on the same base.
• Putting duties in the shared pool. Each line has its own rate; spreading them by value or weight moves duty from one product to another.
• Spreading everything by value when the container filled by volume. Cheap, bulky goods come out cheaper than they cost.
• Mixing up margin and markup. A 30% markup is a 23.1% margin, not 30%.

More guides on pricing, rules and containers are in the guides index.

How HeavyDeals does it

In HeavyDeals every price is a formula of metal index, EUR/USD and margin, each customer has its own discount, and nothing is published until someone on your team approves it. Its customer quote estimates weight, volume, pallets and containers, and says which limit the container hits first. See how it works.

Every figure and rule was checked against the sources above, on the date shown next to each; last review of this guide: 11 October 2026. The examples use illustrative figures, not today’s quotes. This is not legal or tax advice. Written with the help of AI and reviewed by the HeavyDeals team.