Removals to Portugal, from the UK

A move to Portugal is a long road job with a customs border in the middle, and for two of our destinations an ocean after that. None of it is difficult. All of it is sequence.

It starts with a survey, not a price

We look at the UK property first — what is going, what is staying, what is in the loft and the garage. Then we ask about the Portuguese end, which is the question that actually shapes the job. A ground-floor villa outside Caldas da Rainha and a third-floor apartment in Funchal with no lift are wildly different deliveries even if the contents are identical.

We will not quote a household move to Portugal from a phone call and a room count. The number would be wrong, and it would be wrong in the direction that suits us.

Full load or part load

This is the decision that determines most of what follows.

• Full load — your household alone, on its own vehicle or in its own container, collected and delivered on dates you choose. Right when your dates are fixed, or when you are sending a whole house.
• Part load, or groupage — your goods share the space with other consignments going the same way. Considerably cheaper on a route this long. Collection and delivery fall inside a window rather than on a nominated day.

For Madeira and the Azores, groupage is almost always right. A full container to a small island rarely makes sense for a household.

Export packing is not normal packing

A UK move is handled twice: loaded and unloaded. A move to Portugal is handled far more than that, and an island consignment more again — loaded, consolidated, driven, shipped, transferred, delivered.

So the wrapping is built for the number of handling events, not for a single van trip. Corrugated and stretch wrap over upholstery, edge protection on anything with a corner, and marine-grade wrapping on anything with a sea leg ahead of it. This is the part people skip to save money and regret at the far end.

The inventory does two jobs

It is what customs requires, valued item by item. It is also how you check, at an island quayside two transfers later, that what went in is what came out. We write it properly for both reasons.

Then the journey

Overland through France and Spain for the mainland; overland to a Portuguese port and then by sea for the islands. The detail of each leg is on the route page, and the paperwork is set out under customs and ToR relief.

Where we collect from

Anywhere in the UK. London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, Glasgow, Edinburgh and everywhere between — the British end is the straightforward half of this job.