Air Freight to São Paulo, Brazil
 

Hello friends,

We are two travellers in the very fortunate position of having secured sponsorship to fly our motorcycles from Bangkok into São Paulo (GRU) sometime in the next few weeks.

As this is a little-used route, we are struggling to find information on the process and costs of having motorcycles released and cleared through customs at GRU.

We are hoping someone might be able to share a recent experience of doing this or something similar in Brazil?

We would like to avoid having to appoint an agent and then finding out we could have done it ourselves, especially as we are well-travelled and have done this once before (albeit on a different continent).

Thanks in advance!

local help
 

Hey Pepper,

contact the Sao Paulo Horizons Unlimited community here over the website, you will need local help.

Send me a pm if you cant find anybody to help, I have good friends in Sao Paulo. And I will be in Brazil (Rio) in a couple of weeks.

mika :scooter:

Mika, thank you for your reply.

Our airline has contacted a local agent for us so we should be sorted. We're hoping to fly next week, but unfortunately a trip to Rio is not on the cards this time, we will be heading South from SP.

Happy travels :thumbup1:

SP
 

Pepper,

good idea to hire an agent, but make sure you go with him to all the offices and show your face and talk about your journey.

How is your Portuguese?

I met only of one rider over the years, that flew his bike into Sao Paulo. He was Swiss and he flew it in from somewhere in West Africa (Dakar if I remember correctly). But I have lost contact with him.

Hope to be out of Rio before the carnival starts and then go to the Northern beaches, so we wont be meeting up I guess, but who knows.

Good luck.

mika

Hi Mika,

Sorry to miss you, enjoy your time there.

No Portuguese beyond the basics but I’m hoping the facts that I speak Spanish and am trilingual will help me pick up enough to communicate!

Thanks for the advice on going to the offices, we intend to. We are in touch with our agent who’s already telling us stuff like we need to register with the tax authorities which we believe to be wrong so not the best start!

I’ll report back :scooter:

Sao Paulo
 

Hi Pepper,

if you speak Spanish you will be able to communicate and understand most of what they say. Sending messages maybe its better to use an online translate program, depending on the level of English that your agent speaks ....

You are right of course, you dont need a tax number for the temporary import permit for your bikes. Make it very clear to your agent that you are a tourist and you dont live and you dont want to live in Brazil and that every tourist has the right to bring in a vehicle temporarily without paying any tax on it.

Please report back here on the Hubb.

Suerte
mika :scooter:

Disclaimer - we didn't end up flying the bikes to São Paulo (because we were able to change the shipment to Buenos Aires last minute) but we got to the very end of the outbound process and were poised to start paying deposits. This is a record for anyone who may find themselves in this pickle.

The first and essential step is to put in a request for a CPF number. This is an individual taxpayer identification number - you need to get this whether or not you will be paying taxes (yes, it's confusing). Essentially, this will allow you to sign a liability that will enable you to get a Temporary Import Permit.

You can do this online from outside Brazil and it's free:

https://www.gov.br/mre/pt-br/consula...citacao-de-cpf
https://servicos.receita.fazenda.gov...geiro/Fcpf.asp

Note that there is a delay between submitting your request and receiving the number. This can be up to 3 weeks, we receive ours in 10 days.


Next, you will definitely need a broker in Brazil - our broker was Cargofast Logistics, we can't recommend them either positively or negatively because we did not end up using them. We also spoke indirectly with Universal Logistics, who seemed to have more of an inkling of the requirements for an individual importing goods.

There are very specific shipping instructions for air cargo to Brazil.
The broker provides the export agent with detailed instructions which will cover the shipment itself and the AWBs (AirWay Bills). The main rule is that no cargo can be shipped before the broker has given a green light on the draft AWBs. We had the experience of the broker blocking the shipment a day before it was due to go through the customs process in Bangkok because of a detail in the paperwork.

I don't know if this is specific to Brazil, but it is imperative to have a MAWB/HAWB structure to the documentation (in this case we were shipping two motorcycles registered to two different people) - for Buenos Aires, we were told to ditch this format and have separate AWBs.
Essentially, this means having different shippers/consignees depending on the bill.
MAWB: broker in country of departure / broker in Brazil
HAWB: individual shipping the goods / individual shipping the goods


On arrival in Brazil, there are two key documents that are needed for import:

1. Declaração Simplificada de Importação - DSI Eletrônica
Research links:
- https://www.gov.br/receitafederal/pt...dsi-eletronica
- https://www.gov.br/receitafederal/pt...s-and-vehicles

2. Guia Para Liberação de Mercadoria Estrangeira sem Comprovação do Ricolhimento*do ICMS - GLME
http://www.comercioexterior.ms.gov.b...Importador.pdf

The broker should be in charge of getting these done but it may be of use to know what to expect.


This is all the helpful info I can think of. The key thing is to get the CPJ number asap or else the process will grind to a halt.

Based on our discussions with other travellers who had successfully sea/air freighted bikes to Brazil, you would have to expect delays at destination and therefore storage fees to rack up.
Something that kept on coming up - and that we experienced also - was that brokers tend to get very creative when it comes to explaining the cause of a delay. If they don't actually know the answer, they will invent something! The right attitude :mchappy: is to do a lot of research in preparation, search for solutions yourself, and make sure you are copied into and reviewing all comms between brokers.


For reference, we were quoted the following by the broker in Brazil:

-Customs Clearance: USD930.00 per HAWB.
-Airline Fees: USD55.00 per HAWB.
-Desconsolidation Fee: USD50.00 per HAWB.
-Handling Fee: USD40.00 per HAWB.
-Customs warehouse storage: at cost if occur.

Happy travels! :scooter:

Customs clearance USD$930 per HAWB seems excessive. Is that a typo error?

Thanks for sharing the process in detail.

No! Not a typo.

We paid considerably less in Buenos Aires (at blue$ rates).

Wow... thanks for the info.