Last updated: October 2026
By Jack Lv, General Manager — 925 sterling silver and GRA moissanite manufacturing in Foshan since 2011
DDP, Delivered Duty Paid, means the seller arranges export clearance, freight, import clearance and the duties, and delivers to your named address. DDU, now called DAP or Delivered at Place in current Incoterms, means the seller delivers to the named place but you remain the importer of record and you pay the duties and import charges. The choice decides who carries the customs risk, not only who pays the invoice.
Under DDP the seller clears export and import and pays the duty, so the price you agree is the price you land at. Under DDU (now normally written DAP) the seller delivers to your door but the buyer is the importer of record, which means the duty, the clearance fees and the delay risk sit with you.
DDP and DDU are trade terms, also called Incoterms, that allocate cost and risk between a seller and a buyer. They are short codes with long consequences, which is why the only version worth agreeing is one written into the order confirmation with the named delivery place spelled out.
Under DDP the seller is responsible for getting the goods to your door with the import formalities and duties settled. Under DDU the seller is responsible for getting the goods to the named place, but the import side is yours: your registration as importer, your broker, your duty payment. In current Incoterms the DDU concept is expressed as DAP, Delivered at Place, with the same division of responsibility.
Nabest quotes both DDP and DDU, so the useful question is not which term is better in general but which one fits your registration, your broker and your cash flow.
On FOB the risk moves to you when the goods are loaded at the Chinese port; on DDP it stays with the seller until delivery. Air freight is priced on chargeable weight, so a light but bulky jewelry carton is billed on volume, which is why DDP quotes move more with packaging than with silver content.
The bill is the easy part. The part buyers underestimate is that the term also decides who is standing in front of the customs authority when something is queried, and every hour a shipment sits in a customs hold costs money whether or not it is on your invoice.
If you are not registered as an importer in the destination market, or you have no broker relationship, DDU will generate a problem on arrival rather than a saving. If you buy regularly and already clear goods, DDU usually gives you the lower landed cost because you control the clearance charges.
| Responsibility | DDP, Delivered Duty Paid | DDU or DAP, Delivered at Place |
|---|---|---|
| Export clearance in China | Seller | Seller |
| Main freight and insurance | Seller, unless otherwise agreed in writing | Seller to the named place, unless otherwise agreed |
| Importer of record | Seller, or the seller's broker acting for the buyer | Buyer |
| Import duty and local charges | Seller | Buyer |
| Who answers a customs query | Seller's broker in most cases | Buyer's broker |
| Risk transfer point | At the named destination, once the goods are delivered as agreed | At the named place, before import formalities are complete |
| Best suited to | Buyers without an import registration, or first orders | Buyers who already clear goods and want control of the charges |
Express courier suits sample and stock orders up to roughly 30 kg because it clears door to door and needs no broker. Air freight wins on 30 to 200 kg where the value justifies speed, and sea freight only makes sense for heavy packaging or low-value volume, because jewelry is small and the freight saving rarely covers the three to six extra weeks that sea freight adds, depending on route and port.
The right mode follows the value density of the goods and the urgency of the order, not the size of the box alone. Silver jewellery and loose moissanite are high value per unit of weight, which shifts the calculation towards speed and away from the cheapest rate per cubic metre.
Transit times, rates and available services vary by route, season and forwarder, so they have to be quoted for your specific shipment rather than assumed from a general rule.
| Mode | Fits | Trade-offs |
|---|---|---|
| Express courier | Samples, approvals, small urgent repeat orders, single-carton shipments | Highest cost per unit of weight, but door to door with tracking and simpler paperwork |
| Air freight | Medium batches where speed matters and the shipment is consolidated | Lower rate than express on volume, but you handle more of the handling and clearance steps |
| Sea freight | Large, non-urgent restocking where packaging volume dominates | Lowest cost per unit of volume, longest lead time, and goods spend longer in transit and in port |
925 silver is a precious-metal article, so it is declared under chapter 71 of the destination tariff, the chapter for precious-metal articles, rather than as costume jewelry; the six-digit subheading depends on the metal and the setting, so confirm it with your broker, and moissanite is declared as a synthetic stone, not as diamond. Both facts change the declared description and the documentation, even when the duty outcome does not change.
Two properties of these goods drive most of the special handling. The first is value density: a small carton can carry a large declared value, which makes it a target and makes the paperwork more important than the parcel. The second is that silver reacts with its environment, so time in transit is not neutral for the product.
Moissanite adds a documentation requirement rather than a handling one. Because stone reports are issued per stone rather than per order, the report set is part of the shipment file and should travel with the goods or be sent to the importer in advance.
A commercial invoice, a packing list, the air waybill or bill of lading, and the certificate of origin where a preferential rate is claimed. For silver and moissanite we add the material declaration and, on request, the test reports, because a customs officer can ask what the stones actually are.
The document set is standard in shape and unforgiving in detail. Each document has to describe the same goods, in the same units, with the same values, and the importer named on them has to match the entity that will pay the duty.
| Document | Who issues it | What it must show |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial invoice | Seller | Seller and buyer, importer of record, goods description, quantity, unit value, total value, currency and the agreed trade term |
| Packing list | Seller | Carton count, contents per carton, model codes, net and gross weights, and carton dimensions |
| Transport document | Carrier or forwarder | Air waybill, courier waybill or bill of lading, with the consignee matching the importer on the invoice |
| Certificate of origin | Issuing authority or as required | Origin of the goods, and any preferential origin declaration where a preference is being claimed |
| Compliance documents | Testing laboratories | The reports the importer relies on, for example Nabest's REACH SVHC report BKC25020516BR and the RoHS conformity certificate HYC2025120053RV1 |
| Stone documentation | GRA | One moissanite report per stone, matching the stone count in the shipment |
| Insurance certificate | Seller or buyer's insurer | The party insured, the insured value and the cover in force for the shipment |
The destination decides. The same 925 silver chain can carry different duty depending on the importing country's tariff schedule, the origin rules applied to China, and the value declared, so a factory cannot quote you a duty rate with authority. We can quote the goods and the freight, and we will state the HS code we ship under, but the duty rate has to come from your broker or your customs authority.
The duty payable on an import is set by the destination customs authority, based on how the goods are classified and where they originate. Neither the factory nor the customs broker can waive it, and a supplier that quotes you a firm duty figure before your goods are classified is guessing.
Confirm the tariff classification and the rate with your own broker or customs authority for your market, and treat any figure you are given by a supplier as a planning estimate only. Actual rates and charges depend on the destination customs authority and on your forwarder's quotation for the specific shipment.
The same applies to clearance fees, terminal charges and local delivery. These are charged by the destination side, so the cleanest way to compare two quotations is to ask for the same term and the same named place from both suppliers, in writing.
Declare the transaction value, not a lower figure: an under-declared shipment caps your insurance payout at the declared amount and creates a compliance exposure that is larger than the duty saved. Cargo insurance should be arranged by whoever carries the risk under the agreed term, which on FOB is you from the moment of loading.
A shipment is only as insurable as it is accurately described. Declaring a value below the invoice is a common attempt to reduce the duty, and it fails on the destination side, because customs can revalue the goods and the insurance cover is void if the declared value is wrong.
Work out where risk transfers under your chosen term and make sure the cover starts before that point ends. Under DDP the seller carries the goods until delivery, so the seller insures. Under DDU or DAP the seller bears the goods to the named place, and you should be insured from that point onward.
For a first order DDP removes the customs learning curve and gives you a single landed number to test margin against. Once you have a broker and know your duty rate, FOB usually becomes cheaper on repeat orders because you control the freight booking and are no longer paying the seller to carry the clearance risk.
For a first order, DDP is usually the lower-risk choice, because it removes the import formalities from a supply chain you are still testing, and the goods arrive with one party accountable for the whole journey. The trade-off is that you see less of the cost breakdown, so the landed cost is harder to audit.
For a repeat order, the calculation often reverses. Once you are registered as an importer and have a broker, DDU or DAP usually gives you a lower landed cost and full visibility of the clearance charges, at the price of carrying the import side yourself.
Whichever you choose, put it in writing with the named place, the currency of the invoice, and the party responsible for insurance. Nabest ships to customers in over 200 countries and regions and accepts T/T as well as online payment methods through the Alibaba platform, so the term is agreed per order rather than fixed by a template.
Delivered Duty Paid means the seller gets the goods to your named address with export clearance, freight, import clearance and the duty settled. You receive the goods without acting as importer of record, and you see a single invoice rather than a breakdown of the customs charges.
The DDU concept is now written into current Incoterms as DAP, Delivered at Place. The practical meaning is unchanged: the seller delivers to the named place, while the buyer acts as importer of record and pays the duty and import charges. Use whichever wording your supplier uses, but agree the named place and the duty responsibility in writing.
It depends on the agreed term, not on the country of manufacture. Under DDP the seller pays. Under DDU or DAP you pay, because you are the importer of record. Rates and charges are set by the destination customs authority, so confirm the amount with your own broker rather than relying on a supplier's estimate.
For a first order, air freight or express courier usually makes more sense than sea freight, because silver and moissanite are high value per unit of weight and a fast, tracked movement keeps the goods out of long storage in humid conditions. Sea freight becomes attractive when you are restocking in bulk and the packaging volume, not the jewellery value, dominates the shipment.
A commercial invoice, a packing list, the transport document, a certificate of origin where one is required, the compliance reports the importer is relying on such as Nabest's REACH SVHC report BKC25020516BR and the RoHS conformity certificate HYC2025120053RV1, an insurance certificate, and a GRA moissanite report for each stone in the shipment.
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