[Bob Moseley (RIP)]

Hi all – even though I now have a set of five new 900x16 NDT tyres, I thought I would go through the exercise of locating and importing more as they are a rare sought after tyre. My initial research revealed that there are two boundries, namely value of under $1000 and over $1000. Importing tyres of over $1000 value attracts lots of Customs duty etc whereas under $1000 does not attract duty. HOWEVER, research with a Customs Broker revealed the following costs.

• $25 - Entry Charge
• $25 - Customs Charge
• $150 – Customs Broker Fee
• 45c/kilo Airport handling charge – 900x16 = 48kg = $21.60/tyre
• $35 – Airways Bill Charge
• $45 – Deconsolidation Charge
• $140 – Quarantine Inspection Charge
• $25 – another Quarantine Charge

This equates to $531.14 if you could obtain four tyres for under $1000. I obtained a price out of the US of $218.28. Couple that with the charges, each tyre would have a landed cost of $351.

When available I have bought Indian MRF tyres from a local supplier for $220 including GST. However they are hard to obtain as the Indian Government has some sort of embargo on these types of tyres. A distributor in Victoria has some but he wants $440 each.

I know some MLU members have imported tyres, possibly in a container with other stuff and it would be interesting to see what their costs were.

Bob