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Goods in transit cover is the domestic product: your goods on UK roads, in your vehicles or a carrier's, often with limits expressed per vehicle or per tonne. It is frequently bought by the haulier rather than the owner of the goods, and a haulier's policy may only respond to the haulier's legal liability, which standard trading conditions can cap at figures far below the value of what is actually on the truck.
Marine cargo insurance is the international product: it insures the goods themselves, door to door across sea, air and land legs, for their agreed value, regardless of whether any carrier is legally liable. If you import or export and your only protection is the carrier's liability, you do not have cargo cover; you have a claim against someone else's contract conditions.
Most cargo policies are built on the Institute Cargo Clauses, and the letters matter. Clauses C are the narrowest: a short list of named perils, broadly the dramatic ones such as fire, explosion, vessel sinking or capsizing, overturning of land conveyances and general average sacrifice. Clauses B add perils including earthquake, water entering the vessel or container, and loss of packages overboard or during loading and unloading.
Clauses A are the widest: all risks of loss or damage, subject to exclusions, which shifts the burden to the insurer to bring a loss within an exclusion rather than you having to prove a named peril. Theft, non-delivery and rough handling, the losses that actually happen to containers, are the territory where A earns its place. For most commercial shippers of finished goods, Clauses A is the sensible default and anything narrower should be a deliberate decision, usually reserved for bulk commodities traditionally shipped on B or C terms.
The sales contract decides who carries the risk of the goods at each point of the journey, usually by adopting an Incoterm. Under EXW the buyer carries risk almost from the seller's door; under DDP the seller carries it almost to the buyer's. In between, terms like FOB and CIF split the journey at the ship's rail or port, and CIF obliges the seller to buy insurance for the buyer's benefit, historically only to a minimum standard equivalent to the narrow end of the clauses.
Two practical failures recur. Buyers on CIF terms assume they are fully covered because insurance was included, without asking to what standard. And businesses insure the legs they think they own while the Incoterm actually left them on risk elsewhere, most commonly goods sitting at a port after risk has transferred. Align the cargo policy to your actual trading terms, not to a guess.
Property insurance responds to fire, storm, flood and the familiar perils. It does not generally respond to a machine destroying itself: mechanical or electrical breakdown, sudden internal failure of plant. Machinery breakdown cover picks that up, and around it sit related engineering covers: computer and electronic equipment policies for low-voltage kit, deterioration of stock where a refrigeration failure spoils goods, and engineering business interruption where a broken press or oven stops output for weeks while parts come from abroad.
For manufacturers, the business interruption angle usually matters more than the metal. The question is not what the machine costs, but what its silence costs, and whether the lead time on repair or replacement is measured in days or months.
Certain plant must by law be periodically examined by a competent person: pressure systems such as boilers, compressors and air receivers, and lifting equipment from forklifts and cranes to passenger lifts, each on defined examination cycles. An engineering inspection contract provides that competent-person service, with qualified engineer surveyors examining the plant and issuing the written reports your records must hold.
Inspection is a service, not insurance, though it is commonly arranged alongside engineering cover and often by the same providers. The practical point is housekeeping: keep the plant register accurate, because equipment that never made it onto the schedule never gets examined, and an unexamined pressure vessel or hoist is a legal problem before it is ever an insurance one.
A stock throughput policy insures goods continuously from origin through every transit and storage stage to final sale: one policy, one insurer, one set of terms, instead of a cargo policy handing over to a property policy at each warehouse door and back again. For importers holding meaningful stock, it removes the boundary disputes about exactly where goods were when damage happened, and it can price the whole flow more coherently.
Storage outside your own premises deserves particular attention: third-party warehouses, port storage and containers in yards are the points where standard covers are most likely to lapse or overlap. If your goods spend time in places you do not control, put those locations on the table at placement rather than after a loss.
No. Goods in transit is the domestic product, often covering a haulier's liability with per-tonne limits that can sit far below the value of the load. Marine cargo insures the goods themselves for their agreed value, door to door across international movements, regardless of whether a carrier is liable.
Clauses A cover all risks subject to exclusions and are the sensible default for most finished goods, because they pick up theft, non-delivery and handling damage. B and C are narrower named-peril forms, traditionally used for bulk commodities. Buying narrower than A should be a deliberate choice, not an accident of quotation.
Whoever carries the risk under the sales contract, which is set by the Incoterm. Under CIF the seller must insure for the buyer's benefit, but potentially only to a minimum standard. Check the term on your actual contracts and align the policy to it, especially for the port and storage stages.
A service providing the statutory examinations that pressure systems and lifting equipment must undergo by law, carried out by qualified engineer surveyors who issue the written reports you must keep. It is arranged alongside engineering insurance but is a distinct service rather than a policy.
Apex Insurance Brokers Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 724952). This page is general information, not advice on a specific policy.
