ENHow to Buy a Crusher from China: Lead Time, Shipping and Payment
The five steps of buying a crusher from China: specification, contract, production, shipping and commissioning, with a week-by-week timeline.
The machine is half the purchase. The other half is everything between the bank transfer and the first tonnes crushed: specification, contract, production, shipping and commissioning. Managed well, those five steps put a plant on site and crushing in roughly ten to sixteen weeks from first enquiry. Managed badly, they cost the same time twice over. This page walks through buying a crusher from China in the order the process actually happens.
Step 1: Specification
Quotes are comparable only when they answer the same questions, and five facts make them so:
- Feed material and its compressive strength in MPa, which decides plate grade and crusher duty
- Maximum feed lump size in millimetres, and whether the feed arrives pre-screened
- Target capacity in tonnes per hour, and the product sizes the local market pays for
- Power on site: grid, genset or none, which decides the drive architecture
- Haul distance from the nearest port, which prices the overland leg
Send the same five facts to three suppliers and the three quotes can be laid side by side. Send none and the replies will be three different machines built on three different assumptions, none of them matching the site.
Step 2: Quotation and contract
The common payment structure for a crusher bought from China is a 30% deposit with the 70% balance due before shipment; larger suppliers can also work against letters of credit. FOB means the machine is delivered onto the vessel at the Chinese port and the freight becomes the buyer's account. CIF adds freight and insurance to the contract price, and the seller delivers to the destination port. Neither is automatically cheaper: the difference is who books the vessel and carries the risk while the machine moves.
The contract has to list three things beyond the machine itself. First, the spare parts list. Second, the wear parts grade, named explicitly: Mn13, Mn18 or a specified alloy, because a vague label hides the metallurgy that decides plate life. Third, the commissioning scope: whether setup, test run and operator training are included or billed separately. Anything missing from the contract becomes a negotiation later, at the buyer's weakest moment.
Step 3: Production and inspection
Typical production windows run 25-45 days for tracked plants, depending on the factory queue and the option list, and this stage sets the whole lead time. Ask for photographs at agreed milestones: frame welded, crusher mounted, engine installed. Ask for a test-run video of the finished machine under load before the balance is paid. Third-party inspection is available in most Chinese industrial cities for a few hundred dollars, and an inspector standing at the factory gate usually finds more than photographs do. The milestone checks belong in the contract, not in a phone call.
Step 4: Shipping
A crated stationary machine goes in a container and travels at container rates. A tracked plant does not fit one: it ships RORO or on flat racks, with transit of roughly 3-6 weeks from Chinese ports to most African destinations, depending on routing and transhipment. Customs is cleared by the buyer's agent against the documents that travel with the machine: the commercial invoice, the packing list, the bill of lading and any certificates the destination requires. An agent who has cleared crushers before earns the fee in the first shipment; bad paperwork costs more in port storage than the agent ever will.
Step 5: Commissioning and the first spares box
Setup, test run and operator training take days, not weeks, when the crew arrives to a prepared site. The shipment should include the first spares box: a spare set of wear plates, a toggle set, filters and hydraulic hoses, budgeted at two to four percent of machine value. A plant stopped for a fortnight waiting on a casting costs more than the whole box. Ask whether the supplier offers remote diagnostics as well, which shortens most stoppages from a site visit to a video call. SUHMAN packs the first-year wear parts stock with the machine on request, so the box lands with the plant instead of six weeks behind it.
The cheapest machine is the one that arrives with its spares box, its documents and its crew. Everything else is a discount with a delay attached.
The timeline, week by week
| Phase | Typical duration | What you are doing |
|---|---|---|
| Specification and quotes | 1-2 weeks | Sending the five facts, comparing answers, asking wear-life questions |
| Contract and deposit | 1 week | Negotiating terms, listing spares and commissioning scope, paying the 30% deposit |
| Production | 4-7 weeks | Tracking milestones, reviewing photographs and the test-run video |
| Shipping | 3-6 weeks | Booking freight, preparing customs documents with the clearing agent |
| Customs and site delivery | 1-2 weeks | Clearing, permits for the low-loader, preparing the site |
| Commissioning | 2-5 days | Setup, test run, operator training, stocking the spares box |
Added end to end, the realistic lead time from first enquiry to first tonnes crushed runs about ten to sixteen weeks. The most common delay is not production. It is the two or three weeks lost between deciding to buy and sending a proper specification to anyone.
Common questions
How long does it take to buy a crusher from China?
About ten to sixteen weeks end to end. Specification and quotes take one to two weeks, the contract and deposit one more, production of a tracked plant 25-45 days, shipping three to six weeks to African ports, customs and delivery one to two weeks, and commissioning two to five days. A complete specification sent at the start is the single biggest time saver.
What documents are needed to clear a crusher at customs?
The standard set is the commercial invoice, the packing list and the bill of lading, plus any certificates the destination requires, such as an emission certificate or a conformity assessment. The clearing agent files them against the correct tariff line for crushing machinery. Mistakes cost storage fees at the port while corrections are made, so the agent should see the full document set before the vessel sails.
How much wear parts stock should arrive with the machine?
Budget two to four percent of machine value for the first year: a spare set of wear plates, a toggle set, filters and hydraulic hoses. That box converts most stoppages from a parts-ordering crisis into a two-hour change-out. Order it with the machine, not after delivery, because a casting shipped separately follows the same three to six week transit as the plant did.
The price side of the purchase is covered in the jaw crusher price guide, and the landed costs that sit on top of ex-works are set out in the mobile crushing plant cost breakdown. Capacity figures for the current tracked range are on the jaw crusher page, and step one can start at any hour through the quote form.
