Thread: Shipping wooden tables to the UK

Dont know the answer, perhaps British High Commission (in Wellington??)
but my concern would be unless your doing a small container, freight is going to be a killer. Can you break the tables down, ie remove legs etc

be interesting o hear the outcome

I don't know. I doubt they would care as long as the timber is sealed (e.g. varnished) and not an illegal species. So what you do it label is "personal effects".
If you are going to use a shipping company to organise it all then they should be able to give you a direct answer to this question.

What I do know is that NZ went overboard with their COVID isolation rules and so a lot of ships have been avoiding stopping in NZ. For example a ship would typically be a sea for 3 weeks before arriving in NZ. Then they were being forced to isolate for 2 weeks before unloading. Which makes zero sense, since they were already self isolated at sea for 3 weeks. So ships were diverting to other countries and unloading there and heading back. They could be half way back on the return trip by the time NZ would have allowed them to unload. Thus leaving the NZ importers and exporters in the lurch. The NZ government has backed down from this now but that's not an experience a business forgets or recovers from in a hurry. The four biggest exporters were/are actually considering commissioning their own ships to have control of that part of the supply chain.
So what this means is - allow a lot of extra time for the shipping compared to normal.

There could be hassles re Import Duty, etc.
Last year, my daughter posted a special dress to her niece in the UK. Even though it was a gift, apparently, some sort of duty was payable in the UK but no one was notified and eventually it arrived back here after about 8 months without anyone knowing where it was.
The cost of returning it would have been more than the supposed duty.