Turkey makes very good furniture at prices UK workshops cannot match. That is not a secret and it is not a trick — it is labour cost, material cost and a large domestic manufacturing base.

What stops most UK trade buyers going there directly is not the manufacturing. It is everything either side of it. This is what that actually involves.

The duty and VAT positions below are correct as we understand them at the time of writing and reflect how our own shipments are handled. Rules change and circumstances differ. Confirm your specific position with a customs agent before you commit to anything.

Duty: usually zero, conditionally

The UK and Turkey have a free trade agreement in force since the start of 2021. Furniture is an industrial good and falls within it, which means goods of genuine Turkish origin normally enter the UK at zero duty.

The word doing the work in that sentence is origin.

Preferential rates apply to goods that originate in Turkey under the agreement’s rules, not to goods that merely shipped from there. Furniture assembled in Turkey from components made elsewhere may or may not qualify depending on how much value was added and where. If it does not qualify, duty applies at the standard rate for the commodity code.

To claim the zero rate you need valid proof of origin — normally an origin declaration on the commercial invoice, or a movement certificate, depending on the consignment. Without it, your zero-rated shipment is not zero-rated, and you find out at clearance.

The practical failure is dull and common: the supplier does not issue the document, or issues it incorrectly, and nobody checks until the goods are already at the border.

VAT: twenty per cent, and not avoidable

Import VAT applies at twenty per cent regardless of the duty position. It is charged on the landed value — the value of the goods plus freight, insurance and any duty — not on the invoice value alone.

That last detail catches people out. On a consignment where freight is a meaningful proportion of the total, the VAT is noticeably more than twenty per cent of what you paid the factory.

If you are VAT registered it is recoverable in the normal way, and postponed VAT accounting lets you account for it on your return rather than paying it at the border, which is worth setting up before your first shipment rather than after.

If you are not VAT registered, it is simply a cost.

Incoterms: where the money quietly goes

More avoidable cost comes from Incoterms than from anything else in this process.

The term on the order defines exactly where the seller’s responsibility ends and yours begins. Get it wrong and the gap becomes an invoice.

EXW (Ex Works) is the most common quotation from a Turkish workshop and the most misread. It means the goods are available at the factory. Not loaded, not exported, not insured. Everything from that door onward — loading, export clearance, freight, import clearance, delivery — is yours. A quotation that looks cheap on EXW is frequently not cheap.

FCA (Free Carrier) puts export clearance and delivery to the carrier on the seller. Usually a better starting point than EXW for a buyer without a freight setup.

DAP (Delivered at Place) means the seller delivers to your nominated address, but import clearance, duty and VAT remain yours.

DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) means the seller handles everything including duty and import VAT. It sounds ideal and often is not: a Turkish supplier generally cannot recover UK import VAT, so it gets built into the price as a cost rather than something you reclaim. You may end up paying twenty per cent that you could have recovered yourself.

Agree the term in writing at order stage, and price the entire chain from it. Not from the number on the front of the quotation.

Lead times, realistically

Approximate, for bespoke joinery and casegoods:

  • Drawings and samples: one to three weeks, mostly determined by how quickly approvals come back to you
  • Production: six to ten weeks
  • Road freight to the UK: ten to fourteen days
  • Customs clearance: one to three days when the paperwork is right
  • Delivery and installation: by arrangement

So roughly three to four months from approved drawings to installed furniture, assuming nothing goes wrong.

Air freight compresses the middle but rarely makes sense for furniture — the volume is high and the value density is low, which is the worst combination for airfreight economics.

What actually goes wrong

Nobody inspects before shipping. This is the big one. A finish fault caught in the workshop costs a day. The same fault caught in a London flat costs a return shipment, a reproduction and a delivery date. If you are not visiting production, you are relying on photographs taken by the people being inspected.

Proof of origin is missing or wrong. Duty becomes payable on goods you priced as duty-free.

Access is not checked. The furniture arrives and does not fit up the stairs. Lift dimensions, stair turns, door widths and parking restrictions need confirming before production, not on delivery day.

Volume is estimated badly. Freight is priced by cubic metre. A bad estimate moves the freight cost significantly, and it is usually only wrong in one direction.

Payment terms are misjudged. Sixty per cent on order and forty before delivery is a normal structure. Paying a large deposit to a workshop you have not visited, in a country whose legal system you do not know, is a commercial risk that should be priced consciously.

Communication. Specification detail gets lost across languages and timezones. Most of the significant errors we see in other people’s Turkish shipments trace back to an ambiguous drawing note that nobody queried.

Is it worth doing directly?

For a one-off piece, no. The fixed costs — freight, clearance, the trip to inspect — do not spread across a small order.

For a kitchen, a house, or a development, the saving is substantial enough to be worth the effort. The question is whether you want to take on the origin paperwork, the Incoterm risk, the QC visit and the customs entry, or whether you would rather buy the furniture landed and installed and let someone else own that.

That is the entire argument for using a procurement house, stated plainly. We are not cheaper than the workshop. We are cheaper than the workshop plus the things you did not know you were buying.

Quick answers

Is there duty on furniture from Turkey to the UK? Normally zero for goods of Turkish origin under the UK–Turkey agreement, with valid proof of origin. Goods that do not qualify attract duty at the applicable rate.

How much is import VAT? Twenty per cent, on the landed value including freight and duty. Recoverable if you are VAT registered.

How long does shipping take? Ten to fourteen days by road, plus clearance. Around three to four months in total from approved drawings to installation.

Do I need my own customs agent? If you import directly, yes. If you buy landed from a UK company, no.

BPH manufactures bespoke joinery and furniture in Turkey and delivers it installed in the UK. See how we work, or talk to us about a shipment.