Transfering personal belongings to Malta

zer0Index wrote:

Hi all,
It's almost my time to move to Malta. Just a couple of weeks remaining, and I still haven't 100% figured out how to transport my personal stuff.
The "Personal Stuff" is my PC, Consoles, Games and Speakers. So basically electronics.
Does anyone have any advice on how to perform this?
My initial idea (the one I am still planning on doing) is by using the post, in my case the Czech post.
But, does anyone know anything else?

P.S.
I checked DHL and the other express deliveries, and they charge ... whoa! If I recall correctly they were asking for ~ 1500e for a ~40kg package from CZ to MT. And I think that is a bit too much.

Thanks,
D.

If you are flying over you could try booking extra luggage, it may work out cheaper than posting.

Terry

I was thinking of that, but usually the Airlines don't want to transfer fragile electronics, and also I think that the size of my shipment would be too large for extra luggage.

D.

I think I'm allowed to name companies here, when we moved earlier in the year from HK we used, excess-baggage.com/

They source the local pick up firm and delivery firm and everything in between. We had our stuff sent via sea and took about 3 weeks but we wanted this time to find where we would live. We had a 1/4 container of stuff to bring.

Moving to Marsascala this month and I'll finally have space to unpack it all!

T.

MKer wrote:

I think I'm allowed to name companies here, when we moved earlier in the year from HK we used, excess-baggage.com/

They source the local pick up firm and delivery firm and everything in between. We had our stuff sent via sea and took about 3 weeks but we wanted this time to find where we would live. We had a 1/4 container of stuff to bring.

Moving to Marsascala this month and I'll finally have space to unpack it all!

T.

Thanks for the heads up Tim, I'll check them out.
See you in Marsacala by the end of September

UK House sale seems to be progressing well now, so fingers crossed 

Hi

We are moving to Marsaskala in September 2014 and are having a nightmare with quotes for moving our furniture over there. The quotes are all coming in at over £3000 and I only have furniture for a 2 bedroom house and no wardrobes!
Please can anyone give me a cheaper way to get my stuff over to Malta. We are driving our car and our 3 dogs over and plan to leave UK end of August.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
We have found a 3 bed flat to rent in a quiet part of Marsaskala.
How have the rest of you managed to get your furniture to Malta or did you decide to sell it?

Lesley

how many cubic metres are you shipping ? £ 3000 for a 2 bedroom house contents doesn't sound bad at all

Really! I haven't worked out the cubic metres but the contents would fit in a small garage. The sum of 3000 just blew me away.

£3000 is less than I paid, (no complaints), cost seems about right especially if it includes packing, unpacking and insurance.

Thanks redmik but it only includes the transportation and nothing else. Did you have all your furniture shipped over? Who did you use?

We used UniGroup Worldwide UTS under the auspices of their parent group Abels.
Was pricey but we wanted as stress free as possible.
It was an excellent service and included all packing materials, packing, (paid for insurance) and unpacking. Arrived exactly on time when expected.
We did not ship all our furniture as we have away or sold a lot in UK.
We had a 20ft container for our own use, so could have shipped more.
I can send more details of contents and breakdown of costs by PM.

I've shipped abroad a good few times and never paid more than £1000. The most we ever shipped was 6 cubic meters.

We always packed our belongings (clothes, expensive electrical s, small personal items and kitchen wares) ourselves into boxes, that were then arranged the boxes  'tetris style' in 1 meter cubes by my wife for the size of a pallet.

Doing it as many times as I have, I have learned what I can, and can't live without. Most 'material' belongings got sold for example. And I really only posses a few things now that I wouldn't be without. Obviously this is an individual basis thing.

However, I recommend a serious consideration regarding what you are taking if you don't want to pay so much to ship. What could you re-buy in Malta? Do you 'really' need all those books? (my wife chopped her recipe books up and made her own book out of the favorite meals from 30 or so books). Do you need more than one TV? etc....give it some thought :-)

Hope that helps.

A small garage, lets say 3mx2mx5m = 30m3 - £3000 = £10 per cubic metre, sounds cheap  - a standard container holds about 35m3

559lkm wrote:

Hi

We are moving to Marsaskala in September 2014 and are having a nightmare with quotes for moving our furniture over there. The quotes are all coming in at over £3000 and I only have furniture for a 2 bedroom house and no wardrobes!
Please can anyone give me a cheaper way to get my stuff over to Malta. We are driving our car and our 3 dogs over and plan to leave UK end of August.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
We have found a 3 bed flat to rent in a quiet part of Marsaskala.
How have the rest of you managed to get your furniture to Malta or did you decide to sell it?

Lesley

Hi Lesley,
We will also be driving over from the UK to Marsaskala in August to arrive in September after a bit of a road trip with our Collie X.

We have decided to bring nothing with us (we are moving to  a furnished apartment) except what we can fit in the car (which will be mostly dog stuff!) We visit Malta quite a bit anyway on cheap flights so have already taken over some photo albums but have decided we can live without everything else. We'll re-buy what we need on arrival - because, as you have discovered, we feel our stuff just isn't worth the transport costs.

Good luck with the move  - what route are you planning?!

Matt

georgeingozo wrote:

A small garage, lets say 3mx2mx5m = 30m3 - £3000 = £10 per cubic metre, sounds cheap  - a standard container holds about 35m3

Perhaps you are missing a zero Mark?    £3000 divided by 30 = £100!

Ray

oh yes, sorry meant to type £100 per cubic metre :-) still sounds cheap for what is nearly a container load

Thanks for your great advice. I especially like the piece about the cookery books! What a great idea!

I transferred all my CD & vinyl music to hard disks then sold all the originals.
All DVD's were taken out of original packaging and put into albums.
Most, nearly all except a very few books were sold, use the internet for recipes etc.
Use Kindles for reading books (but miss the feel of real books).
Scanned all precious photos and stored on disk.
I downloaded all user manuals for TV's, DVD players etc and stored on hard disk.
All data is stored on 3 separate hard disks - just in case.
Use vacuum bags for clothing, minimises space and can use them when storing over winter here.
You'll be amazed what you can get rid of if you can be 'ruthless' about it.

Great advice and hints! I obviously need to be ruthless

great advice people, great!  truly good people to go out of your way to help others ..I am amazed and very greatful

..vacuum packing!! brilliant

So problem solved about moving our personal belongings. Have booked a 20 ft container which will be delivered to our house on 26th August. We have 3 hours to load it ourselves and then off it goes! This will travel by sea and will be delivered to our doer in Marsascala 1 week later. Total cost is about £1200 so I'm happy!

Hi
We are looking to sort out the shipping of our belongings for the beginning/middle of september & what you said seems what we were hoping to pay. Can you tell me the company you are using please & whether you are shipping a car or not? We are coming from Nottingham.
Many thanks. X

559lkm wrote:

So problem solved about moving our personal belongings. Have booked a 20 ft container which will be delivered to our house on 26th August. We have 3 hours to load it ourselves and then off it goes! This will travel by sea and will be delivered to our doer in Marsascala 1 week later. Total cost is about £1200 so I'm happy!

Does seem good Lesley, well done.  Hmmm maybe we shouldn't have sold (read give away prices) all of our stuff after all! Oh well, too late now 

I have early flight back to Blighty and then will be back with the family in a couple of weeks for good.

Had a lovely evening with friends last night at Grabiels - outdoor dining - can't wait for the social warm evenings that is so rarely possible in UK

Hi, I approached 3 companies in the UK and 3 in Malta and the Maltese company below was the most helpful and by far the cheapest. If you send me your email address I will forward the correspondence from them and the quotes it might help you.

I am only too happy to be able to give advice as I have been receiving  lots of advice from everybody else so it really is nice to be able to give some back. When the container is delivered to you, the driver is not allowed to help load because of insurance. It will stay on our driveway for three hours and in three hours everything must be loaded otherwise there will be an extra charge .It is then taken to the port and shipped to Malta. In Malta, you can arrange to have your goods delivered to the house or go and collect them from the port. Quotes varied from 300-2000 for delivery from port in Malta to our house in Marsascala!

Let me know if I can give you any other advice and good luck with your move!

Carmelo Caruana
Jolita Gatt
Sales Department
Nineteen Twenty Three,
Valletta Road,
Marsa, MRS 3000
Malta

Direct: (+356) 2568 1150
Tel:     (+356) 2568 1555
Fax:    (+356) 2568 1666

Email:  [email protected]
Web:   www.carmelocaruana.com
AEO CERTIFICATE NUMBER: MTAEOF1045562909

Kindly note that we have changed our domain from @ccship.com to @carmelocaruana.com
changed our domain from @ccship.com

Hi Matt, safe journey back to UK and can't wait to meet up with you in a month or so in the Zion bar! Do you know that when you get to Malta,  you have to take Hannah to have a tape worm test? Just discovered that tonight!

Shame you sold all your stuff but I was determined to get my stuff over there at a cheap price. Have also rented a furnished apartment so will be looking for a garage in Marsascala to store all Our stuff. if you hear of anything let me know.

Lesley

there are always garages to rent and fairly cheaply ,, infact at one point i was considering renting a garage to sleep in lol .
when you get to marsascala just look out for the to let signs dotted around most of these will be for garages

559lkm wrote:

Hi Matt, safe journey back to UK and can't wait to meet up with you in a month or so in the Zion bar! Do you know that when you get to Malta,  you have to take Hannah to have a tape worm test? Just discovered that tonight!

Shame you sold all your stuff but I was determined to get my stuff over there at a cheap price. Have also rented a furnished apartment so will be looking for a garage in Marsascala to store all Our stuff. if you hear of anything let me know.

Lesley

Great info Lesley - thanks. Too late for us but others will benefit (don't forget to let us know how it goes though!)

AS Rob has said - getting a garage will not be a problem!! Would offer you ours but our (soon to be) neighbours use it in return for cleaning the shared spaces of the block.

Had a good trip back - good ole eCabs have yet to let me down - busy at the airport at 0530 this morning ...but I had 3 seats to myself on the flight back ...result 

Thanks Rob. Approx how much should I expect to pay for a garage monthly?

http://maltapark.com/item.aspx?ItemID=3512564 it depends on size and area but you can get them very cheaply , this one is 750 euros for a years rent .
but you can get them cheaper then that ,  but i think about 50 euros a month for a decent size one .
As i say the best think is to ring the owners direct when you get here and ask them for their best price.

Thanks Rob. That's cheaper than I thought and will look for one when I arrive. Seems a good idea to get one for storage. Went shopping yesterday and stocked up on items you suggested so thanks for all the tips. Looking forward to meeting you guys!

Hi
How is it in Malta 559lkm? Like you we are moving pretty shortly & have followed your advice by using the same shipment company Carmelo Caruana. How was your experience with them? So far my opinion of them isn't great. We were wanting to put our car in the container - which they said was fine - but only when we spoke to the girl in Manchester did the problems start! We hadn't been informed the container would actually sit 5ft off the ground so that in itself was a blow. We found a company to lift the car (for £100) but then the shippers said unless we had 3rd person liability insurance, they wouldn't accept the booking as we are not professional at securing cars in containers! This is fair comment, but why wasn't this pointed out to us? It looks like we will have to transport our things to Manchester & drive the car there for them to pack it. This actually works out about the same in cost, just more hassle. I also need to check about getting the stuff as we nee the car taking out of the container before the rest of the stuff is delivered. The lay in Manchester has been fantastic & did say the person we'd been dealing with in Malta was fairly new & should have told us all of this - well the girls on holiday for a week now, so maybe I'll get more info from a more experienced member of staff there! Fingers crossed it can still go ahead for the 19 September!!

Oh wow what problems! It was pointed out to us about the car so we decided to drive over the 2 cars and just use the Containers for our personal belongings. We did struggle a bit with the 5ft height though!
It's all worth it although our container isn't due to arrive until the 9th September but we are ready for it and have rented a garage for 450 euros for the year to store our things. Good Luck with your move!
Lesley

Which shipping company did you use for your move ?