Sourcing whiteboards from China

2% duty

Read from the UK Trade Tariff on 26 September 2026, slates and boards with writing or drawing surfaces, framed or not, carried 2% duty on goods from China, with no anti-dumping measure. Interactive displays and touch panels are classified as electronic equipment, and children's magnetic drawing toys as toys, so confirm the commodity code for anything with electronics or aimed at children. For UK-to-China toy trade, see our guide to exporting toys to China.

Surfaces and standards

The writing surface sets the price and the life of a board. Melamine is cheapest but stains and ghosts, painted or lacquered steel is magnetic and cleans better, enamel or ceramic steel resists scratching and ghosting for years of daily use, and glass boards do not ghost at all. Ask which surface and steel thickness you are getting, because melamine and painted steel look alike when new.

BS EN 14434 sets ergonomic, technical and safety requirements and test methods for writing boards in educational institutions, including surface properties, stability and fixing, and school buyers often ask for it. Glass boards should use thermally toughened safety glass to BS EN 12150, and every board sold to consumers must be safe under the General Product Safety Regulations 2005, including secure wall fixings and mobile stands that do not tip.

Worked duty example

Suppose, purely for illustration, you import 2,000 magnetic whiteboards under 9610 00 00 00. At £24,000 free on board and £3,000 to ship and insure, the customs value is £27,000. Whiteboards at 2% pay £540 of duty; VAT is then worked out on value plus duty, £27,540, giving £5,508. Of the £6,048 paid at import, only the £540 of duty stays a cost for a VAT-registered business. Boards are bulky for their value, so freight is a larger share than for most stationery. The method is set out in how UK import duty and VAT work.

What goes wrong

Whiteboards fail on the surface, flatness and transit. Melamine is sold as lacquered steel, marker ink ghosts after weeks, magnets slide off thin steel, and boards bow so light glares unevenly across them. Aluminium frames have sharp corners and loose joints, mobile stands wobble or tip, and boards arrive with cracked corners or scratched faces because they were packed flat without corner protection.

Check the surface with a magnet and a ghosting test using the markers your customers will use, measure steel thickness and flatness, check frame corners and joints, test stability of mobile stands at full tilt, confirm toughened glass markings on glass boards, and approve packing with corner protectors and rigid cartons before loading.

Cambridge China Bridge sources whiteboards, glass boards and mobile stands for schools, offices and retail, with surface tests agreed before production. See our whiteboard sourcing service, and the pencils and paint sets guide for classroom supplies. For filing supplies, see our ring binder mechanisms guide. For office stamps, see our rubber and self-inking stamps guide. For classroom abacuses, see our abacus sourcing guide.