Advice For Sending Parcels To Australia

The parcel market of Australia has a dangerous parcels policy like almost everybody else in the World but they do have some differences as well. When you are thinking of sending a parcel to Australia the advice on the Australian Government web site is to check them first. As they say you may be comfortable to store them at home but when they are shipped long distances and manhandled on many occasions particularly when they are put on an aircraft the whole dynamics change quite rapidly.

The typical list of prohibited substances, which are household objects, is as follows:

Pesticides, acids, aerosols, perfumes, bleaches, matches, cigarette lighters, camping stoves with liquid fuel or compressed gas, anything that contains or has contained petrol, such as lawn mowers, chainsaws, model aircraft etc, batteries, fireworks, sparklers.

Internationally there is a general classification of dangerous goods and some classes are then sub divided in order to be able to describe the properties of the substances. Each class or sub division has a label to describe the nature of the hazard that may be present. These labels must appear on the outside of the packaging and must remain in position while they are in transit. The standard bottles of bleach, aerosol cans and tins of paint all have the standard hazard markings on them.

There are various methods of telling if a product is dangerous firstly look for a diamond shaped hazard warning label. If you cannot see the label but are still concerned look for a UN number, which will, be UN followed by 4 numbers. Also things may have Hazard Class or “corrosive” written on them or you can look on a materials safety sheet on the Internet. If all else fails then ring the manufacturer or the appropriate public authority. The first place to go to is the Worldwide carrier, as he will generally know the answer. If it is a hazardous problem then it is not necessarily that you cannot ship it. There may be special arrangements that you can make and these include getting proper licenses and making sure they travel separately.

After all this you can still get caught by the simplest of mistakes, in Australia they will not allow perfumes to be shipped by a standard parcel delivery firm by air. The logic of this defeat’s most, but it is a standard requirement that under no circumstances is perfume delivered except by ship. So take care and double check.