Shipping Perfume as Dangerous Goods | Help Center

This post was originally published in January 2018 and has been updated in November 2021 for accuracy.

A freight forwarder contacted me to get some help on shipping perfume to Hong Kong. I asked him how he was sending it and he replied, “Air.” I said, “That’s simple.” It would fall under ID8000, Consumer Commodity. Explained to him what that actually meant. Basically, it’s goods that are “packaged and distributed in a form intended or suitable for retail sales for purposes of personal care or household care”; however, there are a few restrictions such as only certain hazard classes and packing groups are permitted. Perfume definitely falls within the criteria.

He came by our office and dropped off 8 decent sized boxes of these goods. I asked the forwarder if he plans on shipping the boxes individually or will be consolidating them (e.g, on a pallet). He said his plan was to take the boxes back to the office once I prepare the boxes and he will palletize them. I advised him he can’t do that, because that would be considered an “overpack” and would require marking and labeling on the outside of the shrink wrap (assumed it would be shrink wrapped). He said “Oh”. I told him we could help him. We will provide the shrink wrap and prepare the shipment completely at our location. He said he already had a heat-treated pallet (all wooden pallets must be heat-treated and stamped) in his van, which was perfect.

Labels Required for Shipping Perfume

Preparing the Shipment

So, I got to work now that the logistics were dealt with. I opened up one of the boxes and saw that there were about 50-60 small (50ml size) bottles inside. This was the good stuff, Miss Dior fragrances and this stuff isn’t cheap. Verified all the boxes contained perfumes and they all did. They were already in good strong packaging and each package was less than 30 kg gross weight. Taped up all the boxes, labeled each box with the class 9 hazard label, the limited quantity mark, orientation labels, shipping name, UN#, and shipper/consignee addresses.

I prepared the shipper’s declaration as an “average per package each” for weight. It’s not always that air regulations make something easy, but with ID8000 the allowance to put in quantity as an average weight really makes it efficient to complete the shipper’s declaration when you have a few of these boxes.

The freight forwarder was able to shrink wrap the pallet and I duplicated all the marking and labeling plus the overpack mark and orientation labels on the outside. I didn’t hear anything back about the status of the shipment, so I assume Miss Diors’ arrived safe and sound!

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