SURGI LAB: SLICING THROUGH CROSS-BORDER RED TAPE
Ordering products and supplies from one country to be shipped to another can often be a frustrating, expensive and time-consuming process. We’ve all grown accustomed to paying high shipping costs and experiencing delays as orders are held up at customs, leading to lengthy waiting times and missed deadlines.
For the suppliers and users of ophthalmic instruments, such delays could mean a hospital having to reschedule several surgical procedures, and risks compromising the health and safety of patients. We think that’s unacceptable. Hospital suppliers and national distributors should be able to order and receive surgical supplies as soon as possible, without unnecessary administrative delays.
Here’s a common problem faced by customers who wish to pay for goods and receive cross-border shipments. As it stands, the process is that the sender of the shipment declares the content and the value of the shipment. Customs officials then verify the shipment and check for any suspicious issues. Multiple delays can occur during this process, such as a missing shipment document, or the customs official querying the customs declaration, or even judging that the shipment is suspicious and refusing onward passage. Any parcel that needs to be clarified remains at customs until the clarification process is completed. This can all add up to significant additional time and effort involved in ensuring the shipment gets through customs in timely fashion.
Another significant, and potentially expensive, issue with cross-border shipments involves the additional costs incurred by the sender and receiver of the shipment. As an example, if SURGI LAB ships a box of 50 or 100 single use ophthalmic knives from Switzerland to Germany, shipping costs in the range of CHF 70-150 are usual, and the receiver of the shipment also needs to pay EUR 20-30 to the forwarder for Value Added Tax (VAT) management purposes. If the receiver of the shipment does not have an account at the forwarder, this additional VAT payment must be paid in cash upon receipt of the shipment, which can cause significant processing issues as well as unexpected cost implications.
- Orders received before 14.00 can be shipped on the same day, to anywhere in the EU, to arrive within 1-3 days.
- From our EU warehouse, we can offer very low shipping costs benefiting from volume discounts
This is just one of the ways in which we strive for perfection, by reimagining what the future of optical healthcare should look like. We always look to make our products reliable and affordable, and available when they are needed. It’s also part of our commitment to carefully selecting suppliers and partners who share our values and allow us to pass on cost-efficiencies to our customers. It’s all part of our ambition to make SURGI LAB the most trusted provider of precision surgical instruments in Europe, and ultimately the world.
