Landed in Lagos: what a CIF quotation for a concrete mixer actually contains

A CIF quotation to Lagos is not a factory price plus a freight line. It is the cost of getting a machine through four gates in a fixed order — Product Certificate, Form M, SONCAP Certificate, vessel — and each gate has a document, a fee and a party who is allowed to file it. The order cannot be rearranged: the Product Certificate has to exist before your bank will open the Form M, the SONCAP Certificate is filed against that Form M, and the ship does not sail until the SONCAP Certificate is issued. A supplier who quotes you a number without having started the Product Certificate has quoted you a number that cannot yet be paid for, because your bank will refuse the Form M and will not usually tell you why. This page walks the four gates in order and shows which costs are fixed and published, and which are quoted per shipment.

The Product Certificate is issued by the Standards Organisation of Nigeria against the exact machine, and it is the exporter who applies for it — not the importer, and not the importer's bank. There are two forms. PC1 costs USD 500, is valid for six months and covers a single shipment. PC2 costs USD 1,000, is valid for twelve months and covers multiple shipments of the same product. Processing is quoted by the regulator at 96 hours, or 24 hours when the file is complete on first submission. Since 27 March 2025 every application goes through the e-SONCAP portal and must carry the full ten-digit HS code; the paper route has been withdrawn. That last point matters more than it looks: the tariff classification of your machine is settled at this gate, before any certificate exists, not argued about at the port afterwards.

The Form M is opened electronically by your bank through the Central Bank of Nigeria trade portal, and it is mandatory for any import above USD 1,000. For machinery it is valid for 365 days rather than the 180 days that general goods get, and it can be extended — so the certificate sequence fits inside it comfortably if the Product Certificate was started on time. What blocks it is the absence of that certificate. The failure mode is quiet: the Form M simply does not go through, and the bank rarely says that a missing Product Certificate is the reason. Buyers then chase the bank, the bank waits for a document only the supplier can produce, and the shipment slips a quarter. If your supplier has not started the PC, your Form M is blocked, and the delay is already in motion before you know it exists.

The Central Bank of Nigeria Foreign Exchange Manual in force since 1 June 2026 caps the advance payment on a physical import at 30% of FOB value, raised from the previous 15%. That figure decides the payment structure of every CIF quotation we issue to a Nigerian buyer: 30% by telegraphic transfer against the proforma invoice, and the remaining 70% against a copy of the bill of lading. The balance therefore moves only once the machine exists and is on the water. A Chinese supplier asking a Nigerian buyer for 50% up front is asking your bank for something it is not permitted to send, and the request itself is a sign the supplier has not shipped to Nigeria under the current rules. When you compare two quotations, compare their payment terms against this ceiling first; a quotation that cannot be paid is not a quotation.

The SONCAP Certificate costs USD 350 per shipment and is applied for against the e-Form M, the final invoice, and your company's RC number and tax identification number. It comes after the Form M, not before, which is why it cannot be prepared in advance and handed over with the proforma. Together with the Product Certificate it is one of the regulator's published charges, and we reproduce those charges so you can see what sits inside the quotation. They are not our fees and we do not mark them up as a separate line — they appear in the CIF or DDP figure as their own item, built in at the quotation stage rather than raised after you have committed. A quotation that omits them is either assuming an exemption you probably cannot use, or planning to add them later.

There is a SONCAP Import Permit route for industrial machinery, and some suppliers will tell you it makes the certificate unnecessary. It is written for bona fide manufacturers registered with the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria who are importing equipment for their own use. An equipment dealer, a rental yard, or a trading importer buying for resale does not qualify, and will be told so at the point where the shipment is already booked. We do not tell buyers that SONCAP is not required, and you should be wary of any supplier who does. Before we quote, we take the exact ten-digit HS code for the machine to an appointed inspection agent — Cotecna, Bureau Veritas or Intertek — and get its regulatory status confirmed in writing. If you are a registered manufacturer importing for your own use, say so, and we will structure the file that way.

A self-loading concrete mixer genuinely answers to two headings. Under 8705.40 it is a motorised concrete-mixer vehicle; under 8474.31 it is a concrete or mortar mixer. The choice is not cosmetic. Under 8705 the machine can be handled as a vehicle, and Nigeria bars motor vehicles more than twelve years old from import — a rule that does not bite on a new machine, but would decide any second-hand business later. Under 8474 it is handled as machinery and the vehicle rules do not attach. Because the e-SONCAP application carries the ten-digit code, this decision is made at gate one. We put the heading on the documents with a note that destination classification is for your customs broker to confirm in writing before the proforma invoice is issued, because the regulated-products list hosted by the central bank dates from 2006 and does not name the HS chapters that cover this machine.

Apapa and Tin Can are the usual entries for containerised and out-of-gauge machinery, and we quote to another Nigerian port if that is where your clearing agent works. A CIF figure covers the machine, ocean freight to the named port, marine insurance, the Product Certificate and SONCAP Certificate, and the export documents — commercial invoice, packing list, bill of lading, certificate of origin. A DDP figure adds Nigerian duty, levies and clearance to that, delivered to your yard. They are different numbers, and we would rather quote you the right one than a smaller one that stops at the port. We do not publish machine prices on this site: what you receive instead is a landed figure to your port, which is the only number that can be compared between one supplier and another.

Of the eleven machines published on this site, exactly one is measured to pass through a 40 ft high-cube door and load two units per container. Every other mixer travels on a flat rack, an open top or a roll-on/roll-off vessel, and the crawler dozers are never a container question at all. The mode decides the freight line and the handling at Apapa, so a CIF figure that has not settled it is a figure that will move. Our quotation states the mode for your specific model before the price, and the container guide on this site shows the measurement behind each verdict. If a supplier quotes "40 ft container" for a mixer that is 2.3 m wide, the door is 2.34 m and the working margin is 50 mm each side; the machine will be re-quoted on a flat rack at the yard, after the deposit.

Ask whether the Product Certificate has been started, and for which form — PC1 or PC2 — since that decides whether a second shipment needs a new certificate. Ask what payment terms they are proposing and check them against the 30% ceiling. Ask which HS heading they intend to declare and whether they have had it confirmed with an inspection agent. Ask what shipping mode the machine will travel by, and to see the measurement. Ask whether the SONCAP Certificate fee is inside the figure or will be added. A supplier who can answer all five in writing has shipped to Nigeria under the current rules. A supplier who cannot has quoted you a factory price with a freight guess attached, and the difference will appear at your bank, at the port, or on the invoice for the next shipment.