I currently have contacts in Kenya who are willing to buy old cars
from the UK.  The cars will consist of UK MOT failures and not road
legal.  All of the cars to be sourced will be priced at under 150
pounds.

I need advice on the best way to ship these old cars.  From what I
understand there are shipping companies who operate a system where you
drive a car onto a dedicated car ship. From what I understand this is
the most expensive shipping option and also depends on the car being
in a good mechanical condition to drive onto the ship.  The other
option I know of is to put the car in a shipping container and ship it
on a standard cargo ship. I suppose the problem with this is you have
to provide your own container or pay expensive rent to the shipping
company to hire a container.  As the mark up on these cars is only a
few hundred pounds each I need the cheapest option.  If anyone could
give advice on the cheapest option and suggest a few of the cheapest
shipping lines I would be very grateful

In addition what are the procedures I need to take when exporting a
vehicle from the UK to Kenya?  What taxes do I have to pay?  Also are
there any loop holes I can exploit as I have heard of people stripping
vehicles down into pieces before loading the container ? are there any
advantages to this?  At what point in law is a car not considered a
car if someone begins to strip it down?  If vehicles are stripped down
before being put in the container do I still need a log book and other
paper work I would need if I was exporting the vehicle in its
entirety?

I would be really grateful if you could give me some advice on these
questions and direct me to the cheapest shipping lines

Thanks Dave

Interesting.

A few months ago I was reading about this. It appears that there is
quite a demand in West Africa for oldish cars - good makes, but older
mechanical technology.

They steal them, cut the lids off and pack them upside down in
containers and trailers. At the other end they rebuild them.

I can't see any problems in the UK with what you want to do, you would
be wise to contact the DVLA and establish a way of writing off the
vehicles, also to forestall any police interest in what you are doing.

This rather caught my interest as about 25 years ago I realized that
there were a lot of old semi-classic cars in Malta (Moris Minors etc)
and an enormous container dump.

Your only legal problem I can see would be at the Kenyan end, and I
guess your contacts over there can handle the ncessary 'formalities'.

I would be slightly nervous of the shipping costs, and am interested
to see what turns up here.

This site is definitely not what you want, but has a couple of useful tips:
http://www.shippinginternational.com/automobiles.htm

I?m not sure that a researcher could fully answer this as the cost of
shipping would require direct contact with a shipper to get a quote.
For example, these two sites. Interestingly, they do give a couple of
examples. The prices quoted seem to make your business model
non-profitable. It may be better to strip the cars down and export the
parts.
?A standard saloon car shipped to Sydney from the port of
Southampton will cost on average £ 790.00 plus insurance. (Dependant on
value). Car shipping costs to the USA or the Mediterranean can start from 
£ 460.00 + insurance for a Port to Port rate for a small sized vehicle.?
http://www.autoshippers.co.uk/rates.htm
http://www.autoshippers.co.uk/Container%20or%20RoRo.htm

http://www.moveme.co.uk/International_Shipping_Services.htm

DVLA rules on exporting vehicles
http://www.compucars.co.uk/investigate-exporting.asp
http://www.dvla.gov.uk/media/pdf/leaflets/v526.pdf
DVLA scrapping and certificates of destruction.
http://www.dvla.gov.uk/media/pdf/leaflets/inf156.pdf
http://www.lizlynne.org.uk/news/680.html

answerfinder-ga