These are port-to-port sailing times in season and should be confirmed per booking. They exclude the time between packing and loading at origin, and between discharge and collection at destination — both of which are where cold chains actually break.
The right load port is usually the one closest to the packhouse, because the road leg at origin is the part of the journey with the least temperature control. A container trucked for six hours in an Egyptian summer before it reaches the quay has already used part of its shelf life. Ask where the crop is packed before you ask which port it leaves from.
For reference, our own packing station sits in the industrial zone at Gamasa, in Dakahlia: 20 minutes by road to Damietta, and about an hour and a half to Port Said or Alexandria. That short first leg is the difference between a container that is plugged in while the crop is still cold and one that is not.
Under FOB you control the booking, the carrier and the freight rate, and you carry the risk from the ship's rail. It suits importers with their own freight arrangements and enough volume to hold a rate.
Under CIF the supplier arranges carriage and insurance to your named port. You pay a single landed figure and carry less operational work, but you also have less visibility of the freight component and less control over which vessel the container is rolled onto if space is short.
In a tight season, the practical difference is who gets rolled. A supplier shipping regular volume usually holds better allocation than an importer booking one container at a time.
The phytosanitary certificate, the certificate of origin, the packing list, the commercial invoice, the bill of lading and the pre-shipment inspection certificate. Where a trade agreement allows preferential origin, the supporting documentation needs to be right at the point of shipment — it cannot be reconstructed after arrival. Confirm with your customs broker which version of each document they need before the first container rather than during it.
