Finland is called the country of the thousands lakes – they cover 10% of its territory. Together with its interesting natural sights, the northern European country generates 1/3 of its gross domestic product by foreign trade. Finland is a significant producer with worldwide importance of electronics, machines, wood material, cellulose, paper, furniture and chemicals. Even though there is lack of great mineral reserves in the country. So if you are planning on doing trade with Finland, there are 3 important things you should know regarding transportation:

1. Trusted logistics partner

Many transporting and forwarding companies include Finland in their service. Yet very few of them have real partner or branch of their company there. It’s important to check if you have trusted company that has real contract agreement with Finish representative. Such partnership would be very useful if there are problems and misunderstandings. The advantage to communicate directly with Finish company saves lots of time and efforts. You could have first hand experience in these cases, when your goods go through a distribution warehouse, and you have to wait for information from forth, or sometimes fifth mediator.

2. Regular service

Often import from Finland to Bulgaria consists of partial (groupage) shipments. When we add the big distances on the territory of the country, you wouldn’t like to wait for a month for delivery of one or two pallets. Choose a company that has regular groupage line to/from Finland. The beaten path gives you security that not only your goods will reach their final destination, but it will be also on time. Eight to ten days are considered acceptable transit time. Of course delivery time depends also on the distances: shipments from Espoo, Turku or Kotka would arrive faster than those from Rovaniemi (distance between them is 850 km).

3. Experience is priceless

You have to be sure, that the company that transports your goods has experience at the given destination. Often when you ask for offers, there are huge differences in the suggested prices. For some Bulgarian transporting and forwarding companies the perspective for ferry expenses is not clear and scary. Companies with regular traffic, such as ours, use discount for the ferry tickets, which would save you expenses.

In addition, for Finish goods it’s important to know what kind are the transported goods. Transporting raw materials via Russia is much cheaper, than via Baltic countries. But the laws for double use of goods in Russia aggravate financially when transporting electronics and machines. You wouldn’t like to be charged for each kilometer with Russian police escort, right?!

Based on material found here.