Your container is in temporary storage and the clock is running. Gxpresss clears cargo held in ERTS and ETSF facilities at the major UK ports and airports, and moves it on — to your premises, to a devanning bay, or into a customs warehouse.
An ETSF — External Temporary Storage Facility — is a site approved by HMRC to hold imported goods that have landed in the UK but have not yet been customs cleared. ERTS, Enhanced Remote Transit Shed, is the older name for the same approval. The terms are used interchangeably in the trade, and goods may stay in temporary storage for a maximum of 90 days.
While the goods sit there they are under customs control. Duty and import VAT are not yet due, but nothing can be sold, processed or delivered until a declaration has been accepted and the port inventory system releases the consignment. Storage is charged for every day of that wait.
Gxpresss is a UK customs broker. We do not sell you storage — we get cargo out of it. Send us the entry or container reference and we will tell you what is holding the release, file the declaration, and arrange the onward leg.
Send the entry reference. We will tell you what is blocking release, usually the same day.
Get a Quote +44 207 993 6953Three different customs statuses that importers routinely confuse. The difference decides how long you can wait and what you are allowed to do with the goods.
| ETSF / ERTS (temporary storage) | Customs warehouse (bonded) | Free circulation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duty and import VAT | Not yet due | Suspended until removal | Paid |
| Maximum time | 90 days from presentation | No fixed limit | Not applicable |
| What you can do with the goods | Nothing — they wait for a declaration | Store, split, re-export, release in batches | Anything |
| Typical reason you are there | Declaration not lodged, query raised, or an inspection | A deliberate cash-flow or re-export decision | The declaration was accepted |
| Cost profile | Daily storage, rising the longer it sits | Planned storage rate | None |
Goods can move from temporary storage into a customs bonded warehouse rather than being cleared immediately — useful when the duty bill is large and the stock will be released gradually.
Four things put a consignment into an ETSF: no declaration was pre-lodged before arrival, HMRC raised a query on the entry, Border Force or Port Health selected the container for inspection, or the goods arrived as groupage and must be deconsolidated before individual entries can be made.
The most common and the most avoidable. If the entry is not on the system when the vessel berths, the container is discharged to temporary storage and starts accruing charges immediately. Pre-lodging is free; storage is not.
A commodity code that does not match the goods description, a valuation HMRC wants evidence for, or a missing licence. The consignment sits until the query is answered. See our guide to fixing a rejected customs declaration.
Border Force documentary or physical checks, or Port Health for food, plant and animal products. Nothing shortens an inspection, but paperwork that matches the cargo shortens what follows it.
LCL and consolidated loads are stripped at the facility before each consignee's entry can be completed — which is where container devanning and destuffing and temporary storage overlap.
Budget roughly £20 to £60 per container per day for the facility itself, plus a £20 to £50 administration charge for the storage entry. The meter starts when the container is received and stops when the declaration is accepted and the release is transmitted.
That is a cost with no upside — it buys nothing except time to do paperwork that could have been done before the vessel arrived. Two things remove it: pre-lodging the declaration so the goods clear on arrival, and making sure the invoice, packing list and transport document agree before they are ever submitted.
Full published breakdowns: UK customs clearance costs, customs broker fees, and the port-specific Felixstowe cost guide.
Southampton carries some of the heaviest ETSF traffic of any UK container port, and it is where most ERTS enquiries reach us — but temporary storage exists at every inventory-linked port and air-freight shed.
Also Tilbury, Liverpool, Dover, Immingham and the rest of our UK seaport coverage.
What importers ask us when a container is sitting in temporary storage.
Send us the entry reference. We will tell you what is holding the release and what it will cost to clear it.