We offer free untracked shipping on all orders below £100 and free tracked shipping on all orders over £100. You can upgrade the shipping on orders under £100 for £5 for UK orders or £10 for international orders.

In the UK we ship by Royal Mail 1st class or 1st class recorded, internationally we ship by Royal Mail International Standard or International Tracked. Some larger international orders may be sent via courier in cases where it is more cost effective to do so (usually UPS but this may depend on your country).

If your order is large enough to warrant sending by courier we will contact you to discuss this before sending it, as we are aware that there can sometimes be issues with imports using couriers in some countries. We would rather spend more on postage to ensure you get your items if courier delivery will be a problem, but in most cases a courier will get a large heavy order to you quicker for a lower cost.

We are no longer shipping to Germany

With the introduction of the Verpackungsgesetz, Germany has introduced a distinctly applicable measure amounting to a trade barrier. For this reason we will no longer be shipping products to Germany once current orders and pre-orders have been shipped. This will obviously come as a disappointment to our German customers, but I hope that you can understand our position outlined below.

The Verpackungsgesetz is intended so that anyone importing goods into Germany pays for the processing of packaging waste. Whilst this sounds like a great idea in principle, in practice for small businesses such as myself it means that whatever small profit was made from shipping something to Germany is reduced even further by fees and there is additional admin time required to register and record postage with the German authorities. I currently ship very few products to Germany and so it is not viable for me or many other small businesses to engage with this system. I am also opposed to trade barriers or measures amounting to trade barriers on principle as someone that believes very strongly in the free movement of goods.

A further issue is that this is a huge jurisdictional overreach on Germany’s part requiring anyone posting a product sold outside Germany to register with a German authority and pay fees to them. I operate under Scottish and UK law, not German law and I object to being required to keep track of the laws of every jurisdiction that I ship to in case they have implemented a law that they expect me to follow. It is up to the customer to ensure that the thing they are buying is legal to own in their country, the customer pays any import duty imposed by their country, and beyond that there should be no further interest from their country’s authorities.

All of my packaging wherever it is sent is made of paper which can be recycled easily or will biodegrade if put in landfill, or it is re-used packaging (bubble wrap and cardboard boxes from things I have ordered) which I encourage customers to further re-use. My business does little if anything to contribute to landfill in Germany or anywhere else.

Simon
Experts at the Craft Table