Lagos is one of the largest panel markets in Africa and one of the least forgiving on documentation. Both are manageable if the order is written correctly.
Lagos is one of the largest panel markets in Africa, and it is specific. The mix that moves is narrower than a European buyer would expect, and the specifications are driven by furniture production and by construction formwork rather than by interior fit-out.
| Product | Common specification | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Raw MDF, 18 mm | 1220 × 2440 mm, roughly 700–750 kg/m³, E1 | Furniture carcass and wardrobe work. The volume item. |
| MDF, 15 mm and 12 mm | Same grade, lighter sections | Drawer boxes, back panels, internal partitions. |
| Particle board, 18 mm | E1, melamine faced or raw | Cheaper carcass work where the panel is never seen. |
| Film faced plywood, 18 mm | Brown or black film, WBP glue, 1220 × 2440 mm | Concrete formwork. Re-use count matters more than the face. |
| Commercial plywood, 4–18 mm | Okoume or bintangor face, MR glue | Ceiling, partitioning, general joinery. |
| Melamine faced MDF | Plain colours and woodgrains | Finished furniture where no laminating plant is available. |
Specifications above are what the market commonly orders, not a local standard. Nigeria works to its own product standards and to SONCAP for conformity — the grade your customer names is the one to write into the order.
Where a container lands in Lagos changes the landed cost more than most buyers expect, because the cost is not the freight rate — it is the dwell time and the haulage.
| Port | Character | Practical consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Apapa | The oldest and historically the most congested; access roads are the constraint as much as berths. | Budget for waiting. For time-critical cargo, ask your agent for current dwell figures rather than last year's. |
| Tin Can Island | Container terminal handling a large share of Lagos box traffic, with its own access issues. | Often the practical default. Confirm the terminal handling charges as a separate line. |
| Lekki Deep Sea | Newer, deeper berth, automated handling, positioned for larger vessels. | Attractive on paper; confirm that your clearing agent and haulier actually operate there before routing a first shipment through it. |
Two things are worth doing regardless. First, get the destination charges in writing before the container sails — terminal handling, shipping line fees, agency and haulage are usually a bigger surprise than duty. Second, name the port in the booking; “Lagos” is not a port.
SONCAP is Nigeria's conformity assessment programme, run by the Standards Organisation of Nigeria and implemented through accredited conformity assessment bodies. It works in two stages, and confusing them is the most common reason a container sits at Apapa for a month.
| Stage | What it covers | When it is arranged |
|---|---|---|
| Product Certificate (PC) | The product type — the specification a manufacturer or exporter is registered to supply. | Before shipment, and it has a validity period. If it has expired, the shipment certificate cannot be issued. |
| SONCAP Certificate (SC) | The individual shipment, tied to the PC and to the invoice. | Per shipment, using the invoice, packing list and test reports. |
The failure mode is not usually an absent certificate. It is a mismatch: the SC is issued against a PC for one thickness or grade, and the container holds another. The paperwork is complete and the cargo is still non-conforming.
Regulated product lists, fees and the route your HS code falls under change from time to time. Confirm the current requirement with a licensed clearing agent or a SON-accredited body before production starts, not after the container is booked.
More on how this compares with other markets is on certifications by market.
The board is bought in dollars per cubic metre and resold in naira per sheet. Three conversions sit between those two numbers, and only one of them is fixed: cubic metre to sheets, naira to dollars, and the time between order and payment.
| Conversion | Fixed or not | How to handle it |
|---|---|---|
| Cubic metre to sheets | Fixed, once thickness and sheet size are set. At 18 mm and 1220 × 2440 mm, one cubic metre is about 18.7 sheets. | Do the arithmetic once and keep it. It never changes. |
| Dollars to naira | Not fixed, and the exposure falls between order and resale. | Quote and settle in dollars per cubic metre. Price the resale on the rate you will actually need, not today's. |
| Density at a given thickness | Fixed by the order, but invisible in a price per sheet. | Ask for kg/m³. A 700 kg/m³ board and a 760 kg/m³ board are the same price per tonne and different prices per sheet. |
The practical advice: keep the purchase in dollars per cubic metre, keep freight as a separate line, and do the naira arithmetic at the point of resale rather than folding it into the buy price. When the two are mixed, a currency move looks like a supplier problem.
For thick MDF the weight limit arrives before the volume limit — a 40 ft high cube of 18 mm board is roughly half full when it reaches its payload. That is the commercial reason mixed loads are normal to Lagos, not a favour offered to small buyers.
| Layer | What goes there | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Bottom | MDF and particle board bundles, heaviest first | Dense board is the weight. Put it where the floor takes it. |
| Middle | Film faced plywood | Dense enough to be stable, light enough to fill above the MDF. |
| Top | Thin plywood, melamine faced board, PVC edge banding | Low mass, high volume. This is what repairs the freight arithmetic. |
| Last row | Blocked and strapped | A part-loaded container has space for cargo to move. The last row is a structural item, not a packing detail. |
See GCC supply for the same mixed-load logic applied to a different destination, and shipping from Qingdao for the port side.
| Weak | Workable |
|---|---|
| “MDF for Nigeria” | “18 mm (±0.2 mm) MDF, 730 kg/m³, E1 per GB/T 39600-2021, 1220 × 2440 mm, sanded, palletised” |
| “SONCAP will be provided” | Name the product certificate number and its validity, and confirm the SC will be issued for this thickness and grade. |
| “CIF Lagos” | “CIF Apapa” or “CIF Tin Can Island” — and ask for the destination charges separately so the landed cost is visible. |
| “Mixed container, whatever fits” | List the layers and the quantities in cubic metres, and say that the last row must be blocked. |
What is a typical minimum order for Lagos? There is no policy figure here; the practical floor is set by how bundles divide inside a container. Below a full load we build a mixed container with other panel products, which is how most Lagos importers order anyway.
Which Lagos port should the container go to? Whichever your clearing agent and haulier actually work with. Lekki is newer and deeper, Apapa and Tin Can Island have the established agent networks. Name the specific port on the booking, because “Lagos” is not one.
Do you arrange SONCAP? We coordinate it with the mill and the accredited body, and we tell you which mill can supply the underlying test data. The certificate is issued through a SON-accredited route and the product certificate must be valid and match the goods.
Is the board sold in Nigeria different from the export standard? The board is the same board. What differs is the paperwork and, often, the density the market asks for. Write the density into the order rather than assuming it.
Why is a price per sheet quoted in naira hard to compare? Because two of the three conversions behind it move. Sheets per cubic metre is fixed at about 18.7 for 18 mm board; the exchange rate is not. Compare in dollars per cubic metre at a stated density.
Do you have a warehouse in Lagos? No. We ship from China to your port, and the goods clear in your name or through your agent. We are an exporter, not a local stockist.
Give us the destination market, the thickness and the grade your customer asked for. We come back with the mill options, the certificate each one can supply, and a price per cubic metre.
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