Sourcing safes and cash boxes from China

2% duty

Read from the UK Trade Tariff on 26 September 2026, armoured or reinforced safes, strongboxes, doors and safe deposit lockers for strongrooms, and cash or deed boxes and the like, of base metal, carried 2% duty on goods from China, with no anti-dumping measure. Filing cabinets and gun cabinets that are not armoured safes may be classified as metal furniture, so confirm the commodity code for each design.

Security grades, fire and locks

Insurers set cash and valuables cover by the safe's certified grade: BS EN 14450 S1 and S2 for lower-security secure safe cabinets, and BS EN 1143-1 grades 0 to V and above for higher security, each tested for resistance to attack and anchoring. The certificate has to come from an accredited certification body and match the model, because a label alone does not satisfy an insurer.

Fire resistance is tested separately, for example to EN 15659 for light fire storage units or EN 1047-1 for data and paper, and electronic and mechanical locks are graded under EN 1300. Consumer safes are covered by the General Product Safety Regulations 2005. See the locks and padlocks guide.

Worked duty example

For a made-up shipment of 500 home safes certified to BS EN 14450 S2 under 8303 00 40 00, add the £5,000 of freight and insurance to the £45,000 free-on-board price and customs sees £50,000. At 2%, duty on these safes is £1,000; import VAT of £10,200 is 20% of the value with duty added. Together that is £11,200, but a VAT-registered importer usually gets the VAT back. Safes are very heavy for their volume, so freight is a tenth of the customs value here. The duty and VAT guide walks through the calculation.

What goes wrong

Safes fail on certification, construction and locks. Units are labelled with a grade the model was never certified for, steel is thinner than the certified design, bolt work and hinges are weaker, and anchoring points are missing or poorly placed. Electronic locks fail or can be reset without the code, override keys are poorly controlled, fire seals are missing, and heavy units arrive with damaged doors because they were not palleted and strapped.

Check the certificate from the certification body against the exact model and production site, measure body and door steel thickness against the certified design, check bolt count and hinge construction, confirm anchoring points and fixings, test lock functions including reset and override procedures, check fire seals where a fire rating is claimed, and inspect pallets and strapping before loading.

Cambridge China Bridge sources home and commercial safes, cash boxes and strongboxes, with certification checked against the model and construction measured before shipment. See our safe sourcing service.