FCAFree Carrier

If you ship containers from India, FCA is the term the ICC would like you to use. Most of the market quotes FOB instead. This page explains what FCA does better, and where in India it earns its keep.

Our spine here is one line from a UK small-business forum in January 2024. A buyer who'd tried to import from India wrote that "it was the inland trucking in india that made it none viable so hopefully your suppliers are near a port" (r/smallbusinessuk, January 2024). He didn't say which term he was on, and that's the point. Much of what India makes is made hundreds of kilometres from the sea, and FCA is the term that lets you decide who moves it there. The caveat - FCA only helps if you have a forwarder who can take over inland. Without one it does nothing for you.

1. What FCA Means

Free Carrier. The seller delivers the goods, cleared for export, to the carrier or other person you nominate, at a named place. That place can be the seller's own premises or somewhere else, such as an inland container depot or a forwarder's warehouse.

Where the handover happens changes who loads. At the seller's premises the seller must load the goods onto your collecting vehicle. Anywhere else, the seller's job ends when the goods arrive on its own vehicle, ready to be unloaded by your carrier. FCA works for any mode of transport, and for more than one mode in the same shipment. The rules quoted are Incoterms 2020, in force since 1 January 2020, and as of 25 September 2026 the ICC has published no newer edition.

Who does what

2. Where The Risk Passes

Risk passes when the goods are delivered to your carrier at the named place. At the factory, that's once they're loaded on your truck. At a depot or terminal, that's when the seller's vehicle arrives there ready for unloading. After that the goods are at your risk, wherever they sit.

Compare that with FOB, where the seller carries the risk until the goods are on board. A container can sit in a terminal yard for days before the ship arrives, and under FOB the seller carries risk for goods it can no longer touch. That's why the ICC's Introduction to the 2020 rules says FOB, CFR and CIF shouldn't be used for containers, and why its March 2024 practice note is about FCA and CPT.

3. Where FCA Earns Its Keep: Inland India

Ludhiana, Jaipur, Moradabad and Panipat each have a container depot in or near the town, and the rail corridor to the Gujarat and Mumbai ports has been complete since March 2026 (DFCCIL, Verified). FCA at the depot keeps the rail leg and the port handling under one booking you control. Our port map has the depot for each cluster (location guides), and which gateway the feeder actually loads at is on sea freight routes.

This is the answer to the UK buyer's problem. On a FOB port quote, the inland haul is baked into the supplier's price and you can't see or shop it. On FCA at the depot, the inland leg becomes a line your forwarder quotes, so you know before you commit whether a far-from-port supplier still makes sense. Sometimes it won't, and that's worth knowing on day one rather than after the sample.

Small LCL lots from inland are the exception. One forwarder's advice for Jaipur is not to try to stuff a consolidation box at the depot at all, because LCL cargo gets trucked to Nhava Sheva or Mundra anyway (r/exportersindia, July 2026, a vendor voice). For a few cubic metres, FCA at the port CFS may be the more honest place to name.

4. How To Write It

Write FCA ICD Dadri, Incoterms 2020 or FCA [seller's address], Tiruppur, Incoterms 2020. Name the exact point, not the town. "FCA Ludhiana" leaves the seller free to deliver to any carrier's yard in Ludhiana. "FCA ICD Dhandarikalan" doesn't.

Loading is split by place, so the forklift, labour and waiting-time lines follow that split. Put it in the PO. And check the depot is live. Not every depot on paper is customs-connected today. Panipat's Jattipur depot appears on the customs site list but wasn't network-connected in early 2024 (ICEGATE list, Verified), so ask your forwarder for its current status.

5. The Letter Of Credit Fix

One change in the 2020 edition matters if you pay by letter of credit. You and the seller can agree that you'll instruct the carrier to issue an on-board bill of lading to the seller once the container is loaded, even though delivery under FCA happened earlier at the depot. That lets the seller present the document a bank asks for without dragging the risk point back to the ship. Say so in the contract if you need it. What the bank checks against that document is on how to pay an overseas supplier safely.

6. The Seller Must Still Be A Real Exporter

FCA needs a seller that files its own shipping bill. Many small Indian suppliers can't run an export and hand the goods to a logistics provider, leaving the buyer to sort out the rest (importers on trade forums, 2024 to 2025, Indicative). Ask before you agree the term. If the answer is no, the EXW page explains what you've really been offered.

Who uses FCA? We have no usage statistics and the ICC publishes none. From our research, Indian exporters quote FCA far less often than FOB, mainly the larger exporters used to European and North American buyers who insist on it, and on air shipments where "FOB airport" makes no sense. Inland-cluster exporters rarely offer it unless asked. So ask (Indicative).

7. What It Means For Your Landed Cost And Duty

An FCA price is lower than the same supplier's FOB price, because the inland leg and port charges move to your side. That's not a saving, it's a transfer, and the landed cost calculator has lines for both.

Customs value shifts by destination. In the UK and the EU, transport to the border or point of entry is added (GOV.UK Method 1). In the US, the price paid excludes international freight and insurance, so the FCA price plus the Indian inland freight to the port is close to the base. New Zealand and Australia value on an FOB basis, so inland freight in India is added and international freight is not (NZ Customs guide, May 2025, ABF valuation fact sheet (opens in a new tab)). The step by step is on working out the real import duty. Paperwork is the same as FOB: the seller files the shipping bill and gets the certificate of origin, and you handle the import side (exporting from India).

8. FOR: The Indian Domestic Term That Looks Like FCA

Indian suppliers quoting for the home market write FOR, Free on Rail or Free on Road, and now and then it leaks into a quote for you. It isn't an Incoterms rule and was never meant for export. Indian government procurement uses it in two versions. "FOR dispatching station" means the seller hands the goods to the carrier at the railway station or transporter's godown nearest the factory. "FOR destination" means the seller pays the carriage to the station or godown nearest the buyer (Ministry of Finance, Manual for Procurement of Goods, June 2022, §6.3, Verified). The same manual says a quote that's silent on which one is read as FOR destination.

For a foreign buyer FOR says nothing about export clearance, the port or the ship, and the "destination" is a city inside India. FOR dispatching station is the closest cousin of FCA at the seller's premises. FOR destination is closer to CPT to an Indian town, which is no use to you at all. If you see FOR then ask for FCA at a named depot or FOB at a named port, Incoterms 2020. Its delivered cousin, "door delivery", is on the DAP page.

FCA Next To Its Neighbours

FOB passes risk on board the ship rather than at handover, and it remains right for bulk loaded straight onto a vessel. EXW has the seller neither load nor clear export, which is why the ICC tells buyers who can't clear export to use FCA instead. CPT has the same risk point as FCA, with the seller also booking the carriage, and CIP adds all-risks insurance bought for you.

Back To The UK Buyer

He ended his comment hoping the next person's suppliers were near a port. With FCA you don't have to hope. You name the depot, your forwarder quotes the inland leg before you order, and a far-off supplier either still works on paper or doesn't. That's a decision you make before the sample, not after the invoice.