Our 2000m² warehouse in Bicester in the UK is the heart of our operation. Equipment is ready packed and available for dispatch by air, sea or road at short notice.
We welcome visitors by appointment. We have a visitors’ area and offer tours to larger groups of supporters, students, and other interested people. If you would like to bring a group on a tour, please fill in our
tour booking form and send it back to
stockteam@oxfam.org.uk.
The Supply Centre is here to ensure that all the items needed in the first phase of an emergency response are held in sufficient quantities, in one place, ready to go. This is why Oxfam choses to keep a permanent warehouse and staff, and over €1.5m of stock.
Most of items in this catalogue are held at our Bicester Warehouse. These items are marked “
Ready to Ship: 2 days” on the product pages. This means that we will need no more than two days to prepare the order ready for dispatch. Note that actual times to dispatch may vary depending on freight availability, detailed export documentation requirements, etc.
There are certain other items which are marked Ready to Ship within two weeks, or six weeks. These items are typically not required in the first phase of emergency response and are not usually held in stock, but we have arrangements in place with our suppliers to make them available within a fixed lead-time.
The task of delivering goods to international destinations is growing ever more challenging, due to the growing complexity of import regulations in the developing world. A single missing or incorrect shipping document can be the cause untold delay and cost at the port of entry. The key to ensuring a smooth and hassle free importation process is to make 100% sure that all the correct export procedures have been followed to the letter before the goods leave us.
Fortunately we have been doing this for the last 40 years and so are quite good at it! We have a dedicated team of experienced professional staff who are responsible for the entire process from receiving your Request for Quotation all the way up to dispatching the cargo with a complete set of correct export documents and tracking the shipment to the port of entry. We have strong and longstanding relationships with our freight forwarding agents and together we do our utmost to ensure that nothing goes wrong.
We do however require that our customers make sure that they are fully familiar with the import regulations in the destination country. We strongly recommend that our customers appoint a reputable and experienced clearing agent and communicate all the relevant import requirements to us prior to shipment.
We can deliver by air or sea freight up to the port of entry in the destination country. We can also deliver to certain defined destinations by overland road freight. We will deliver the goods complete with the right export documents up to the port of entry, the task of clearing the goods, paying import duties, and doing the "last mile" delivery is the responsibility of the customer.
Air freight deliveries are usually done on Incoterm® CIP (Carriage and Insurance Paid To).
Sea freight deliveries are done CIF (Cost, Insurance and Freight).
Customers are also able to collect the goods from our warehouse in Bicester and arrange their own shipment. If you wish to collect the goods from us, we supply on EXW (Ex-Works) terms.
For a more detailed explanation of the meaning of various Incoterms®, see the
International Chamber of Commerce website.