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Chinese Factory Shutdowns: What to Plan For Now

Updated July 2026 · 4 min read

Factory downtime in China is the scheduling risk most first-time importers underestimate. A Western public holiday costs you a day. Chinese New Year can cost you six weeks of reliable production capacity. Here is what is still ahead.

Still Ahead in 2026

• Mid-Autumn Festival (Sep 27): Three days off. The bigger issue is the rush of orders stacking up ahead of Golden Week, which starts days later.
• National Day / Golden Week (Oct 1 to 7): A full week of national shutdown, second only to Chinese New Year for disruption. Anything you need before year end should already be in production before this starts.

Chinese New Year 2027 Lands Early

Chinese New Year falls on 6 February 2027, eleven days earlier than in 2026. The official public holiday runs 5 to 12 February, eight days. That official window is misleading though. In practice many factories run skeleton crews for two to three weeks beforehand as migrant workers travel home, close fully for the holiday itself, then ramp back up unevenly over the following month. For a lot of categories the realistic loss of dependable capacity is four to six weeks, not eight days.

The State Council usually confirms exact holiday dates in November or December, so treat the official window as provisional until then.

The Deadlines That Actually Matter

Working backwards from 6 February 2027: place repeat orders by mid-November 2026, and new products that still need sampling or tooling by mid-October 2026. Later than that and you are choosing between a rushed sample approval and a post-holiday ship date. We build these buffers into every timeline by default.

Need help mapping your production calendar? Get in touch and we will work backwards from your ship date.

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Sea Freight Rates in 2026: Where They Actually Sit

Updated July 2026 · 5 min read

Container rates are one of the biggest swing factors in your landed cost, and they move fast enough that most published figures are already wrong by the time you read them. Here is where things stood in late July 2026, with the caveat that you should always check a live index before you budget.

Where Rates Sit Right Now

In the week of 23 July 2026, Drewry’s composite World Container Index sat at roughly $4,374 per 40ft container. On the lanes that matter most: Shanghai to Rotterdam around $4,900, Shanghai to Genoa around $6,500, Shanghai to Los Angeles around $5,900, and Shanghai to New York around $7,600.

Rates peaked in early July at their highest level since September 2024, then fell for two consecutive weeks as carriers added capacity and demand softened. Year on year they remain substantially higher.

Why Europe Is Still Expensive

Red Sea diversions are still in effect, so most Europe-bound services continue routing around the Cape of Good Hope. That adds roughly 10 to 14 days of transit and absorbs vessel capacity that would otherwise be available elsewhere. It is the main reason Mediterranean rates carry such a premium over Northern Europe.

How to Budget for This

Do not build a quote around a rate you read in an article, including this one. Drewry publishes its World Container Index publicly every Thursday, and that is the number to check before you commit. Add at least a week of buffer to any sea freight timeline, and for genuinely urgent work, air freight the samples and sea freight the bulk.

Planning a shipment? Let’s talk logistics and we will quote against live rates, not a stale number.

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Import Duties on Chinese Goods: The 2026 Reality

Updated July 2026 · 6 min read

“How much will customs cost me” is the most common question we get, and the honest answer changed a lot during 2026. Here is a practical breakdown for EU and US importers.

What Import Duties Are

Import duties are taxes your government charges when goods cross the border, calculated as a percentage of the declared value, typically the CIF value covering cost, insurance and freight. They are separate from VAT or sales tax.

HS Codes Determine Everything

Every product gets a Harmonized System code, six to ten digits, and that code sets your duty rate. Misclassification is expensive in both directions. You either overpay for years without noticing, or you underpay and face penalties plus back duties when customs catches it.

The US Picture in 2026

This is where it has become complicated. Core Section 301 duties on Chinese goods sit at 25%, and on 24 July 2026 the temporary Section 122 balance-of-payments surcharge expired by operation of law after its 150 day limit. It did not simply lapse. A new Section 301 layer of 10 to 12.5% covering products from around 80 countries took effect the same minute. The practical headline rate for most Chinese goods therefore did not fall, but its character changed: the replacement carries no statutory expiry date, so what used to be temporary is now open ended.

Some categories sit far higher. Electric vehicles exceed 100% on Section 301 alone, semiconductors are at 50%, and a 25% Section 232 tariff on certain advanced computing chips took effect on 15 January 2026. Two further changes matter: the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs in February 2026, though Section 301 was untouched by that ruling, and the de minimis exemption is gone, having ended for China and Hong Kong on 2 May 2025 and for all other countries on 29 August 2025, so low value shipments no longer enter duty free.

The EU Picture

Simpler and cheaper. Customs duty typically runs 0 to 14% depending on category, plus import VAT at 19 to 21% depending on the member state. The VAT is reclaimable if you are VAT registered, so for most businesses it is a cash flow question rather than a real cost.

How We Help

We identify the correct HS codes before production rather than after, calculate landed cost including duty so your margin maths is real, and pick incoterms to suit your tax position. Most EU clients prefer DAP so they handle import VAT themselves and reclaim it.

Tariff policy moved repeatedly through 2026 and litigation is ongoing. Treat any published rate, including the ones above, as a starting point to verify rather than a number to budget against.

Not sure what your duties would look like? Book a free call and we will give you a realistic landed cost breakdown.

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Child-Resistant Packaging: What Certification Actually Requires

Published July 2026 · 6 min read

Child-resistant packaging gets treated like a design feature, something you specify and a factory delivers. It is not. CR is a test result, and a supplier who cannot show you the test report has not sold you compliant packaging. If you sell regulated products into the US, that distinction is legal, not cosmetic.

Two Standards, Two Different Jobs

Buyers routinely conflate these. ASTM D3475 is a voluntary classification standard. It categorises child-resistant package formats and guides design and selection, so it tells you what type of closure you are dealing with. It does not certify anything. 16 CFR 1700.20 is the regulatory test protocol under the Poison Prevention Packaging Act, enforced by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and it is the one that determines whether a package is legally child resistant. If a supplier tells you a package “meets ASTM”, ask separately whether it passed 1700.20 protocol testing.

What the Test Actually Measures

Child-Resistant Effectiveness uses a panel of 50 children aged 42 to 51 months. They are shown how to open the package and told they may use their teeth. At least 85% must fail to open it within the first five minutes, and at least 80% must still have failed across the full ten minutes.

Senior Adult Use Effectiveness uses adults aged 50 to 70. At least 90% must be able to open the package within five minutes and, where the design requires resecuring, close it properly within one further minute.

That second panel is the one buyers forget. A package a child cannot open is easy to make. A package a child cannot open and a 68 year old can is the actual engineering problem, and it is where cheap closures fail.

What to Ask Your Supplier

Ask for the test report, not a claim. Specifically: which protocol was tested, the panel sizes, the pass percentages at both intervals for children and both intervals for seniors, the test date, and the laboratory. Then ask whether the report covers the exact closure and container combination you are buying, because a cap certified on one bottle geometry is not automatically certified on another.

Why This Trips People Up

A factory can honestly say a closure design is child resistant because that design passed somewhere, while your specific pairing has never been tested. Certification attaches to a tested configuration, not to a concept. Changing the container, the liner, the torque specification, or in some cases even the decoration, can put you outside what the report actually covers.

How We Handle It

We ask for the report before quoting, check that it covers your exact configuration, and flag when a change you have requested would invalidate it. If a factory cannot produce documentation, we tell you rather than passing the risk along. Compliance paperwork is the least glamorous part of sourcing and the most expensive part to get wrong.

Sourcing child-resistant packaging? Book a free call and we will review what your supplier is actually offering.