I was amazed at the number of kiwis who came out of the woodwork and replyed to my Introduction post, so thought I would look to you all for some advice.....

Has anyone had any experience shipping over belongings from New Zealand?

I am moving to Fribourg and would love to move over some of my "comfort items" - nothing too big, no furniture, just a bunch of appliances.
I have ABSOLUTELY no idea how much this sort of thing would cost. I called Crown Relocations and they quoted NZ$6000 door-to-door from Auckland to Fribourg...is this good/bad/worth it?

Can anyone recommend any companies or offer any advice?

I recently moved to Zurich and used 'The Moving Company' who I would be happy to recommend. I was in the fortunate position of having work pick up the bill but the quote from Crown was significantly higher than any others I got so it would probably pay to shop around - $6k strikes me as top dollar.

Most NZ agents have tie-up's with agents overseas (Harsch handled the CH end of things with my stuff) and so there is no need to rely on the multi-national approach of Crown.

You will also find that shipping gets relatively cheaper as the volume increases as there are a large amount of fixed costs (organising shipping, customs clearance, general admin etc) that do not really increase with the volume and so I would get quotes for a couple of different volumes and then judge whether it is worth bringing more.

Good luck with the move - you might want to go travelling en-route as your stuff will take 8-9 weeks to arrive !!!!

I remember when I moved CH->NZ 11 years ago, we paid $6k CHF for half a 40-foot container. Fitted the whole household in it, furniture and the works.

This time around, NZ->CH, we went with check-in baggage only. Meant a nice clear-out of all the crap we'd accumulated over the years.

If you're prepared to travel a little to pick up your stuff, the prices can drop considerably. When I moved from Australia to northern Germany X years ago, I shipped over a big palette of boxes to Hamburg (had to arrange to collect from the harbour myself) and the price was quite reasonable. Not sure what the nearest port to Fribourg might be. Marseille, perhaps?

Good luck.

Jetta Express ( Brisbane or Sydney ) might be able to help you out from NZ - am speculating only though. I shipped 180kg of electrical appliances as "excess baggage" from Brisbane to Zurich in December 2007 at the cost of A$240 ( approximately CHF210 then ).

Hi Kiwigeek,

previous company shipped my personal effects to Switzerland via Allied Pickfords since they had the cheapest cost vs. Crown Relocations and Tiger. I was very happy with their service. Very professional and our contact here in their Zurich office was very responsive:

Cynthia Fahrni <Cynthia.Fahrni@teamalliedgroup.com>

Perhaps you could inquire with her. It was LCL (less than full container load) and I sent all sort of items...from furniture to clothing to porcelain ware, glass lamps, paintings and even food...everything arrived safe and smelling nice even after 1.5 months at sea I also used Crown in 2006 and while nothing was broken, I did lose a couple of items

Not from NZ, but Sydney - which is not far away...and it was only 25% more expensive to air-freight door-to-door - and that meant our stuff arrived basically when we did...worth looking at...my MIL dealt with the removalists three days after we left, and our stuff arrived 5 days later including a weekend...

The hardest thing was to actually pin down what we wanted to take - and then - we moved 7.5 cubic metres for $7000AUD, and that was top-dollar, with three kids and a husband who needed to be ready to work within 10 days of arriving in a new country where we didn't know the language - our priority was having our household 'functional' in the minimum of time - regardless of cost...

I don't regret bringing anything, though, because we gave away and threw out everything we left behind except for three boxes of childhood treasures, and our whole 'life' was relocated...

The second-hand trade is alive and well in Switzerland, there was nothing furniture-wise that we really needed...

Ball-park figure that I worked out was $200 per 20kg box to air-freight (Australia Post) - Sea maybe $120-$150 per box ? - Excess baggage would fall somewhere between the two prices - and really varies depending on the airline - some do it per kg and some 'per suitcase'...sea freight is by the cubic metre, not weight...

Hope that helps a bit. I know it was an *enormous* chore when we had to do it...not something we plan to repeat any time soon...