Shipping LCL from the U.K. to St. Martin

[Zanshin]

I have a couple of items in a box of about 40Kg and around 1m3 that I would like to send to St. Martin from Newcastle in the U.K. via sea-freight. Can anyone here recommend a good shipping company?

[Shiny_sxm]

CMA-CGM has weekly sailings Tilbury - Philipsburg. They do do LCL, but you have to be persistent to get them to admit it. Using a broker will make that easier.

The other regular route is Geest line weekly Portmouth - Antigua with forwarding on a smaller Caribbean line. Beware the hassle of getting anything into or out of Antigua - the forwarders clearly make their money on storage, so do not expect to make the first (or event third) connecting sailing.

[Zanshin]

Shiny - thanks for the CMA-CGM link; I'll follow up on that. I've shipped to SXM before using both Tropical and a small company that unfortunately no longer exists and know enough about Antigua to avoid it like the plague for shipping things.

[Highland Fling]

Phone Fours Star Cargo in Philipsberg they have some sort of link with a UK EU shipper sadly i cant find the name of the company ATM but I am sure a quick call to FSC will get that info for you.

OR get it to Miami and use Lilly at Interlink Connections we use IC lots and they are good and not expensive they ship to SXM twice a week I think

[Shiny_sxm]

Zanshin, as you know trans-shipping though the US is a real pain - worse than Antigua, and that is saying something...

[Zanshin]

Shiny_sxm - I have shipped through the USA before and agree with you that the amount of paperwork and documentation (plus associated fees) make it challenging but can't compare it with Antigua since I haven't done that yet. I believe that by going through 4 Star the shipment would also go to Miami first and thus have to go through all the rigamarole of transshipping as well (Although I do have a 4-Star account for direct US-SXM shipping and that is a breeze to use); but I'll give that a try.
I might have gotten a hot tip from one of the members here for someone shipping a container with some space available from the continent to SXM which could work out, but I'm still working on that.