Personal care and toiletries

What this category covers

In customs terms this category resolves to 11 headings: 3304.99 — dentifrices; 3305.90 — manicure or pedicure sets and instruments, including nail files; 3306.10 — other beauty, make-up and skin-care preparations; 3307.20 — other preparations for use on the hair; 3401.11 — personal deodorants and antiperspirants; 4818.10 — safety razor blades, including razor blade blanks in strips; 5601.21 — sanitary towels and tampons, napkins and napkin liners for babies, and similar articles, of any material; 6302.60 — soap and organic surface-active products in bars, cakes or moulded pieces, for toilet use; 8212.20 — toilet linen and kitchen linen, of terry towelling or similar terry fabrics, of cotton; 8214.20 — toilet paper; 9619.00 — wadding of cotton and articles thereof. The heading, not the category name, decides the duty you pay at destination, so two lines sitting next to each other on this page can clear at different rates. Each heading has its own page with the classification reasoning on it.

How these goods ship

At an average of 11 kg to the carton these are dense goods: a 20' GP reaches its 26-tonne payload with volume to spare, so the container weighs out and a 40' high cube buys nothing on this cargo alone. They are the lines to combine with light ones to make a full load work. Carton net weights across the category run from 4.32 kg to 18 kg, so the answer shifts depending on which lines you combine.

These figures are the average of the 13 published primary packs in this category and are a guide to which limit binds, not a quotation. Carton dimensions and gross weight are confirmed per shipment, and the container fill calculator works the arithmetic for your own cartons.

Handling and storage

Detergents, aerosols and alcohol-bearing toiletries are not all plain cargo: some lines carry a UN number and a class, which changes the documentation and what they may be stowed with. Where a line in this category is regulated for transport we say so on enquiry, before it is quoted rather than after.

Brands in this category

Always, Bixkil, Cinthol, Close Up, Dettol, Dorco, Dove, Evercare, Generic / Unbranded, Glysolid, Herbodent, Imperial Leather, Johnson's, Lifebuoy, Lux, Nahla, Nivea, Palmolive, Parachute, Pears, Rexona, Signal. The 2 that are linked hold enough published lines to have pages of their own, with the packs and label languages we carry for them. We are not the brand owner for any of these and we do not manufacture. Goods are sourced as genuine branded stock for export; pack artwork and language vary by the origin a lot is drawn from.

What we hold

Across these 27 lines: 19 distinct retail pack formats, label languages available in Arabic and English. The smallest consumer pack we carry here is a 50 ml aerosol can or roll-on bottle and the largest a 200 ml aerosol can or roll-on bottle. Everything is quoted on one full container per order, mixed across products where a single line will not fill it.

Documents that travel with the goods

Cosmetic lines in this category clear against an ingredient disclosure and a free-sale certificate, and several Gulf and African destinations register the product before the first import rather than at the border. Soaps and detergents may need a safety data sheet, and any line classified for transport carries a UN number that changes what it may be stowed with. These clear on commercial documents — invoice, packing list and certificate of origin — without a health authority in the chain, which makes them among the faster categories to move on a first order. The full list, and who issues each one, is on the documentation page. We name the document set for your destination before quoting, not after.

Combining this with other categories

An order is one full container, and few buyers take a whole box of a single category. These average 11 kg to the carton, so they reach the payload with volume left over. The load balances against lighter cargo: instant noodles and ramen at 0.54 kg, coffee at 2.22 kg, snacks and chips at 2.62 kg. Mixing across categories on one bill of lading is normal here and does not change the documentation. The container fill calculator takes your own carton figures and works out where the box stops.

What is not published here

2 of these 27 lines are listed but not yet fully specified — a customs classification still with our classifier, a carton quantity the stock list does not carry, or a production detail the supplier confirms per lot. Those pages say which, and the figure is confirmed with the quotation rather than estimated here.