Composite Decking Trade Costs: FOB, MOQ and Landed Cost
Composite decking is bought at trade volume FOB, quoted per square metre and per board profile, on a 300 m² minimum per profile and a 25–30 day production lead time. The FOB number is not what the boards cost you. Freight, duty, port charges, fastenings and trim sit outside it, and on a first container those extras can add up to more than the price tier you negotiated. This page sets out each layer, and what to confirm in writing before a container is loaded.
I’m Maggie Zhao — 15 years on the production side of WPC, running extrusion lines, checking raw material batches and loading containers to more than 30 countries. This page of the composite decking guides is for distributors, contractors and importers buying at volume. If you are pricing a garden deck for your own house, the composite decking cost guide is the page you want.
Who buys at volume — and what a first order looks like
A first trade order is normally one board profile in one or two colours, not a container split across five SKUs.
The instinct to spread risk across SKUs is understandable — it feels safer, and it means no single profile can fail. In practice the opposite happens: one profile sells through faster, the second container is bigger than the first, and a catalog assembled before you have a read on your own market costs you loading efficiency on every order. Most of the buyers behind this site are small and mid-sized distributors, contractors moving from retail buying to direct import, installers quoting larger jobs, and importers building a catalog. All of them start the same way.
What you are pricing: FOB, CIF and DDP
Composite decking is quoted on one of three bases — FOB, CIF or DDP — and no two of them can be compared until you know which one you are looking at.
| Base | What it covers | What it leaves out | Normally used when |
|---|---|---|---|
| FOB (port of loading) | Boards loaded on board at the Chinese port | Ocean freight, insurance, duty, destination port charges, inland delivery | You control your own freight forwarder |
| CIF | Boards + freight + insurance to destination port | Duty, destination port charges, inland delivery | First import, or you don’t have a forwarder |
| DDP | Delivered to your door, duty paid | Nothing — but no visibility into any layer | Small orders, or you want one number only |
A quote that does not name the basis is not a quote. Ask. And when you do get one, ask what happens to it if the vessel rolls — because on the destination end, the cost of a delay is usually yours.
Quantity tiers: how the price actually steps
Price tiers in composite decking follow container utilisation, not arbitrary order sizes, so the step between one tier and the next is usually one container.
The minimum is 300 m² per profile, and on narrow profiles that minimum is really a loading minimum — the point at which a container can be filled sensibly rather than the point at which the factory starts caring. Which means the useful first question is not “what is your price at 500 m²” but “how many m² fill a container in the profile I want”. That number sets the tier you are negotiating inside, and it is different for every width and length combination.
How long a quote holds
An FOB quote on composite decking is normally held for a fixed window, because the core is tied to resin and wood-flour prices.
Three things to pin down before you treat the number as real:
- How many days the price holds — and whether that window restarts when you confirm colours.
- What happens mid-production — if resin moves between order and shipment, who absorbs it. Some factories hold the price, some re-quote. Both are legitimate; not saying which one is not.
- Currency and exposure — the quote is in USD, your customer pays in something else, and nobody has agreed who carries the difference.
Comparing a per-m² quote with a per-board price
Composite decking is quoted per square metre FOB and priced per board or per square foot in the destination market, and the conversion between them is where two honest quotes quietly become incomparable.
1 m² = 10.764 sq ft. A board priced per linear metre tells you nothing about m² unless you also know its width and how much it covers once laid. So ask for both, in the same breath: the m² price, and the coverage per board. If the answer to the second is a different number than the first, you have found the 7% that goes missing in market-by-market price comparisons.
How much loads into a container
The loading plan moves landed cost more than the unit price does: how many m² fit in a 40HQ depends on board width, length, thickness and whether profiles nest — not on weight alone.
Ask for the loading plan with the quote, not after it. What you want: m² per 40HQ, m² per 20GP, whether the shipment goes palletised or loose, and whether two profiles can travel in one container without eating the volume that made the tier price work. On a first order, a quote without a loading plan is half a quote.
Coverage width: nominal vs actual
Boards are sold by nominal width and laid by coverage width, and on a clipped system the difference is the clip — so a 140 mm board does not cover 140 mm.
This is where margin quietly disappears. Buyers calculate on nominal width; decks are priced by area installed; the clip takes the difference. Ask for coverage width including the clip, in writing, and price the deck on that number. It is a smaller number than you expected, and it is the one your customer will measure.
What is in the price — and what is bolted on
Fasteners, starter clips, joists, fascia and stair trims are usually quoted as separate lines, and whether they are in or out can move the effective unit price by 8–15%.
Build the full bill of materials before you compare anything:
| Line | Usually quoted | Ask about |
|---|---|---|
| Decking boards | Yes | Coverage width, profile, colour |
| Clips and starter clips | Sometimes | Included per m² or per box |
| Screws and plugs | Sometimes | Stainless or coated |
| Joists / substructure | Rarely | Same material or not — this is a cost trap |
| Fascia and stair nosing | Rarely | Same colour batch as the boards |
| Packing and edge protection | Sometimes | Who pays if a pallet arrives damaged |
| Spare boards | No | Allowance per container |
| Test reports | No | Whether you can present them |
A quote that prices boards only is a starting point, not a comparison.
Freight, duty and port charges
Freight, duty and port charges sit outside the FOB price, and who pays each of them should be settled before production starts rather than at the destination port.
The lines to agree, one by one: ocean freight and any peak-season surcharge; marine insurance; destination terminal handling, documentation and customs brokerage; inland delivery; import duty and, where it applies, anti-dumping. Then two questions that decide whether the arrangement actually works: who books the container, and who carries the cost when the vessel rolls or the port congests. Both are normal events. Neither is a good time to be establishing who pays. →send a spec and destination port
Payment terms
Payment on trade orders is normally structured as a deposit before production and the balance before shipment, with the exact split agreed per order.
Three things worth asking, in this order: the deposit percentage; whether a letter of credit is accepted; and whether any credit period is available at your volume and history. Tied-up cash is a real cost — a 60-day credit period is not a favour, it is a number, and it belongs in the comparison alongside the unit price.
Certifications and test reports
A test report is only worth what you can do with it, so ask whether reports are issued in a form you can present to your own customer.